Golden Rivers
by The Ocean Is My Inkwell
Summary: Book 3 of the Magician of Fire Saga. Something is wrong with Artemis, and Percy and Annabeth must journey to find the secret.  When they go missing, it's up to Hecate's daughter to find them. And meanwhile, a child of Aphrodite hosts Nemesis's spirit. P/A
1. Chapter 1: Trouble Comes in Threes

**A/N: I told you I couldn't stay away from this story for long! Thank you all, my dear and absolutely **_**wonderful**_** fans who've been patient this past year and a half to follow the long and twisty story of Wynter Popplewell. I hope you're not all disappointed that Percy and Annabeth had only minor roles in the last book; I promise that they will be main characters again in this one.**

**In case you clicked on this by accident, or were too curious to stay away, or were just bored with no homework or chores to do, this is Book 3 of the Magician of Fire Saga, the story of Wynter Popplewell (daughter of Hecate) and her sacrificial quests. Book 1 (**_**Blue Fire**_**) is not so necessary if you're in a hurry; it just had my own prophecy in it, with a plague on Camp Half-Blood, lots of monsters and surprises, an evil-half-brother/son-of-Kronos showing up, and some whirlwind romance with Zac (a son of Apollo).**

**Book 2 (**_**Blood Ice**_**), though, was pretty interesting-it had the next Great Prophecy in it. If you want to read it first, I would hardly prevent you! But again, if you're in a hurry, you'll find explanations spread out through this Book 3 (**_**Golden Rivers**_**) as clearly as I possibly could get them to be.**

**So, without further ado, please read on!**

Chapter 1: Trouble Comes in Threes

My flaming hair whipped back violently as the vicious fanged November wind clawed at my face. Hopping up and down, I rubbed my pale hands briskly over my bony arms. I tried to recall the seventeen different names I had thought of before to call my brother when he arrived to pick me up.

That is, _if_ he came at all.

Jasper was, rather mildly put...unbalanced. In his little sister's opinion, that is. He was the craziest and the best-est guy any girl could have for a brother. If we weren't siblings, I'd call him Sweet. But since we _are_ siblings, and I am biased in favor of another very sweet guy I know, I'll just settle for Irritating.

_Finally_, after a half million dozen more times of unwinding and rewinding my flimsy indigo scarf around my neck, there came the deafening roar of Jasper's motorcycle. Fashionably late.

He'd grown out his hair a bit since our "first" meeting in August. See, he _was_ possessed by the evil Titan Kronos before then, and had threatened my life a couple of times both indirectly and very directly, so there's no wonder why he acts funny the way that he does. Of course, I had to be the sacrificial heroine who went off and died twice the same summer-and spied on both sides of the war to save my life and my friends-oh, and gave up my old body for a new one-long, long story, really-simply to rescue _him_.

Don't take this for a grudge. I loved the old bozo bro to death.

Jasper whipped back his unruly auburn waves and peered over his heavily tinted shades at me. "I'm here to pick up a beautiful young lady by the name of Ms. Wynter Popplewell," he announced, with perfect uncertainty for the situation.

I rolled my eyes and slapped his arm as hard as I could with my book bag. "You _vlacas_, you irritating weasel, you importunate rat, you aggravating fruit bat, you peacocked crow, you senseless whirligig..."

Jasper laughed a low, rumbling laugh and tucked my slight frame securely in front of him on his flashy ebony and crimson bike. "Maybe you could turn me into one of them. That'd be super fun."

"And ten times more super fun to smash you as a whirligig," I acquiesced.

He chuckled again. "Sorry. Zac dragged me through town scouring every store for a present for you."

I turned around and slapped his chest this time-ouch, that almost hurt. "Zac would kill you. You know, maybe you should have been the one to host Kronos and try to spy on both sides at the same time. That should teach you some mighty valuable lessons about zhipping your huge mouthy."

"You know," mused Jasper, hardly raising his voice as his bike roared to life recklessly down the street, "your tone, your rapidity, your threat to turn me into a whirligig-they would be quite effective, if only you hadn't said 'zhip your mouthy'." He winked at me. "Cute factor rubbing off on you?"

I turned a slow, somber look on him. "Jasper, I somewhat woke up on the very wrong side of the bed today. Would you like me to kindly turn your bike into that garbage dump across the next highway?"

He threw back his head and laughed high up to the realm of Zeus.

I~I~I~I~I

Getting confused so far? I _hate_ repeating myself, but it seems repetition is a necessary evil and part of Zeus's curse on man after Prometheus acted out, because repetition is the only thing you ever learn in school.

So. Anyway. I'm Wynter Popplewell, in case you have dyslexia like me and couldn't quite read that little bit of story up there. I'm fourteen-almost fifteen, because my birthday is this November. (Yes, you must have caught that Zac-buying-me-a-present part.) My "bozo bro" Jasper is...ahem...nineteen years old. And still immature. We're both kids of Hecate, goddess of magic, who in my opinion deserves a throne on Olympus. Why not thirteen Olympians? It certainly is my lucky number.

Jasper's dad, though, is long dead. Kronos, evil-Titan-who-was-chained-up-in-Tartarus-but-was-sneaky-enough-to-get-out-twice-before-I-kicked-his-butt. (Well, not exactly, but you get the idea.) It would actually be hard to determine Jasper's real age, since he is much older than nineteen-can't believe it-but didn't age so fast due to the perks of having a mom goddess of magic.

My dad is Professor Popplewell, teacher of architecture and currently my friend Annabeth Chase's idol. Last year she along with her friend/closer-than-friend Percy Jackson fulfilled a Great Prophecy, and as a reward her mom Athena made her the official architect to redesign Olympus.

Also, FYI, I fulfilled the next Great Prophecy the year after-this very summer-on a quest with Percy, Annabeth, Imani Knight, Aleici, Aithne, and my sweet guy Zac Heyerdahl. I'm not much of a braggart; I'm just briefing you on the facts. And that is how we come right around full circle back to...

I~I~I~I~I

Now.

Cracking flying eggs on the pan and flipping them sunny-side up with an invisible person's hand holding a stainless steel utensil.

Ever since the goddess Gaia gave me a new body, I had become more and more comfortable with my magical powers. I had a much greater awareness of my limits and my possibilities, and completing household chores with a flick of a finger was one of those rather glorious "possibilities."

Smirking, I directed an egg at Jasper and cracked it neatly with a thunderous crash against the back of his head.

He whirled. "Hey!"

Laughing, I only had time to dive under the dining table as the spatula raised its fist menacingly and flew at my shoulder. I raised my arm, and it melted midair into a plastic mouse that scuttled away.

"That was my favorite spatula," Jasper complained.

I shrugged, then pointed my finger judiciously at the squeaking plastic mouse as I emerged from beneath the table. Just as I was brushing myself off, there was the comical _ding!_ as the mouse morphed back into a regular blue Calphalon spatula.

"Thanks," Jasper grumbled, plucking it warily out of the air. He yelped and dropped it with a clatter.

"You honestly didn't think I would just let you have it back, did you?" I declared triumphantly. "It's electrically charged now."

Growling in a most unbrotherly fashion, Jasper grabbed the nearest thing at hand-a plastic tumbler-and launched it magically at my head. I ducked neatly, and the pink thing whistled past my 'do to crack just in time in Dad's nose as he shuffled through the front door.

"Hoy! What are you two doing again?" called Dad, who had been verily flattened by the blow. He struggled to his knees.

Jasper looked appropriately abashed, while I collapsed on the floor and rolled around laughing.

"It was her fault," Jasper spluttered defensively. "I mean, she cracked an egg on my head, and melted my best spatula into a mouse, and electrocuted me with a kitchen utensil-"

"He threw the spatula at me," I interrupted. "And the egg thing was an accident. Besides, he was _late_ again at school. He deserved it."

Dad glanced rapidly back and forth between the two of us. Abruptly he gave up the entire thing, threw up his hands, and cried aloud, "Ye gods, what shall I do with these young miscreants?"

I~I~I~I~I

Twenty minutes later, we had properly made up for our "disorderly conduct" and prepared the rest of our delicious omelettes with scarcely another irritation. That was something about Dad's presence-I had to give him the credit.

"By the way," I spoke up through a mouthful of egg and molten cheese, "how come you came home so early, Dad? I mean, you literally would have missed the tumbler-and-spatula thing if you hadn't come through the door at the wrong time."

Dad had to smile wryly at my expression. "I'm glad you brought it up. I wasn't so sure how to broach the subject."

Jasper's sky blue eyes slid warily across the table at me.

"What?" I burst out.

"Chiron has called for your aid once more," replied Dad. He immediately sobered again. "The camp is facing a crisis."

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Jasper rub his forehead wearily. He still blamed himself primarily for the troubles that Camp Half-Blood experienced, even if it was already technically long after the battles with him as possessed by Kronos.

Dad cast a glance of concern at my brother. "You have nothing to do with this, Jasper," he assured him quietly. He turned to me again. "Percy Jackson and Annabeth Chase, Chiron believes, have gone missing."

My fork clattered unceremoniously to the floor. (Only by last-minute magic was I able to retrieve it, clean, and set it back on my plate.)

"Wha-?" I forced myself to swallow my egg. I choked, chugged a swig of water down, and turned back to my father, my ice blue eyes wide open. "Who, what, where, when, why, and _HOW_?"

Dad pursed his lips against my sextuple-barrel question. "Chiron would not give me the details over the phone. He had actually hoped to speak with you. Of course, he understood that you don't own a cell phone for safety reasons, but it was urgent. He would like you-and Jasper as well-over at Camp tonight, if possible."

I began shoveling the rest of my dinner into my mouth and stood up, still drinking. "It's possible. Nifty naiads, Dad, why didn't you tell me sooner? Jasper, I'll do the dishes. No, go ahead and pack. If you could start my backpack as well, that'd be great. Yes, I'll need the bottle..."

Less than thirteen minutes later-I told you that was my lucky number-we were racing down the steps of our apartment and roaring down Broadway, headed for Long Island.

**A/N: ...and I TOLD you Percy and Annabeth were gonna be crucial here. Just saying. =) But if you got this far, thanks for reading! Please don't hesitate to review-I don't bite! (And if you have any questions, whether about the plot or something confusing or **_**anything**_**, please please please feel free to send me a message.)**

**Thanks!**

**~Katrina Mae (aka The Ocean Is My Inkwell)**


	2. Chapter 2: Double Spells Trouble

**A/N: Yay! I'm alive! Just kidding, just kidding. But seriously, I made it through **_**this**_** chapter alive. More twists, more turns...more evil surprises. So read on!**

**Also, a great many thanks to Bianca for being my first reviewer!**

Chapter 2: Double Spells Trouble

"Wynter! Jasper! I'm relieved to see you back here."

Chiron greeted us in full centaur-form at the very gate of the borders of Camp Half-Blood. After a reluctant hug and several protective instructions, Dad had chugged away, casting worried glances at us through the rear view mirror.

I grasped Chiron's hand in an old companion's greeting. "Mr. Chiron! What's wrong?"

"I'm sure your father already told you about Percy and Annabeth," began Chiron, already trotting up the hill back toward the Big House. Panting, Jasper and I jogged after him.

"Yeah," I replied when we were on the veranda at last. "Missing? What's all that about?"

"I have been trying to contact Percy for several days now," he explained. "I tried calling his mother, Ms. Jackson, but no one was picking up. There was a voicemail, but no one called back."

"And Annabeth?" asked Jasper.

"Nearly the same thing-except that after several days, I received a hazy Iris-message directly from her that seemed to come from some sort of train station with a dirty fountain. The connection was poor; I couldn't hear a word she said. But she had her cap on, which must mean she was in some danger, or else she would not be going invisible."

"Right," I agreed breathlessly. "Did you get any other kind of message?"

"This," he said solemnly, and produced a small lavender notecard from somewhere on his person.

I snatched it from him and scanned it: even with my newfound skill of reading with my new body-I'd been an illiterate street kid before-my half-blood's dyslexia battled with me.

I shoved the note into Jasper's fumbling hands. "Hey, try to make sense of that."

His eyes widened. "This is Demi's penmanship!"

"What?" I hissed. I took it back.

_Not here will you find them;_

_Even the sun cannot predict._

_Moon's shadow tells you signs._

_Each day erases them._

_Seek for the lost_

_In places forged of Fate._

_Seek for the lost_

_Half a silver ray away._

_Ariadne's fate you face-_

_Dare cheat the game you chose._

_Each bargain has it price._

_Seek too much, and beware._

"Now what in Morpheus' murderous mullings does this nonsensical piece mean?" I burst out. "It doesn't even have rhyme or meter!"

"It's Demi, all right," Jasper murmured again.

"I suspected that as well," sighed Chiron. "I only wished Jasper to ascertain it."

"I have to call Zac," I rushed on, making the smoothest segue in the world. My mind was roaring off at a million miles per hour: Percy and Annabeth missing. Demi's writing. A senseless riddle. A weird, nutty Iris-message. A train station? Danger? My hands began to shake. Was Zac all right?

"No need," Chiron broke in through my thoughts. "He is right here, in fact."

I turned, and who else should I see but sixteen-year-old Zac Heyerdahl running as fast as he could right at us.

"Zac!" I practically screamed.

In seconds he had bounded onto the porch, engulfing me in a warm and spicy embrace. I was reluctant to let go-his unbuttoned, rumpled polo over his t-shirt smelled too good and comforting.

"I got your message," Zac told Chiron hurriedly over my head. "The car broke down halfway up the island, so I ran up as fast as I could. I left behind some of my stuff, but I got my weapons ready."

I pulled away and had to step back to look at Zac with concern. "I thought Demi had got you," I said. The blood flooded my cheeks afterward, but I didn't care.

Zac grinned, a peculiar sight amid the worry storming across his sunny face. "I'm cool. Chiron told me everything before he even told you. Oh, and...er...hello, Jasper."

"Yeah," replied Jasper, an awkward response that somehow patched up the more awkward situation. I guess my brother shopping with my, ahem, _male friend_ earlier that day didn't quite transition well enough into this mess.

"Did you get to read Demi's note?" I asked quickly.

Zac nodded. "Chiron showed me over the Iris-message."

I rubbed my stiff, cold hands nervously. "What do you think Percy and Annabeth have to do with this, Chiron?"

The camp director stamped his hoof uneasily on the wooden porch floor. "I'm afraid I cannot say exactly. I do recall Annabeth mentioning to me sometime early in the school year, during one of our Iris-messages, that she'd been noticing something strange about the moon." He paused.

I couldn't stand the dramatic effect. "What?"

"If any of you three have been observing the sky...well, there hasn't been a full moon in months now."

Jasper blinked-his version of astonishment. My own mouth hung slightly open.

"My dad didn't mention any of this," said Zac in bewilderment and anger. His dad, you might like to know, happens to be Apollo, god of prophecy and the sun. And Artemis, goddess of the moon and the Hunt, just so happens to be his younger twin sister.

"Apollo is not aware of whatever is causing a problem with our Lady Artemis, apparently," Chiron pointed out. "In fact, it seems he has very little hand, if at all, in this matter. That message from Demi Cochemagne even says 'the sun cannot predict'."

"Hey, you're right," I exclaimed, scanning over the purple paper again. "But it says 'Moon's shadow tells you signs...Each day erases them'. That would be describing the problem with the moon."

"It makes sense now," remarked Jasper. "At least, some of it."

"I still don't get the connection," I complained wearily. "Why Percy? Why Annabeth? And if there's danger, who are they fighting?"

"Hey, Winnie," broke in Zac gently, touching my shoulder. "Take a look at this."

"What?"

He took the paper from me and slanted it slightly sideways in front of me. "It was the first thing I noticed just now, because you were angling it away from me. It's an acrostic."

I gasped. N-E-M-E-S-I-S-H-A-D-E-S.

"Nemesis, and Hades," I whispered.

I~I~I~I~I

Seventeen dazed minutes later, I was packing my "extras" with hands still trembling uncontrollably. I cleared the dusty shelves in the Hecate cabin of all the bottles of potions and magic paraphernalia which I'd left behind for the winter; in my haste and nervousness, I knocked my experimental "anti-love" potion bottle to the floor and watched almost stupidly as it shattered into shiny indigo shards and watery blue stuff.

"You should really calm yourself," said Jasper behind me.

I sighed and turned to eye him critically. He studiously avoided my gaze and turned back to his own packing; he had much less stuff, since he was a more typical guy and since he'd hardly spent any time at camp this past summer.

I shrugged-I was sure he caught the gesture from the corner of his eye. "You know, there was this one time this summer...when Zac was talking to me. He was telling me about this weird dream he had about Demi. How she was doing some sort of stupid ritual...and how she accepted the spirit of Nemesis into herself." I couldn't stop myself from shuddering. "I don't know. Maybe he was wrong."

Jasper turned back halfway to show that he was frowning. His hands slowed in their work. "Apollo is the god of prophecies," he pointed out uneasily.

"I know."

"So there's probably point zero one percent that he's wrong."

"Yeah." I swallowed noisily. "But what does Hades have to do with this?"

"Ever heard of making a pact with the devil?" said my brother.

I chomped down on my lip. "So what, Demi marched up to the Lord of the Dead and asked for a spell to kill me?"

"Er...something like that. It's not out of character."

I rolled my eyes shakily. "Sheesh, and what with the goddess of _revenge_ living inside her now."

"Why-?" He shut his mouth abruptly.

"Um..." I cleared my throat discomfitedly. "She was, er, kind of pissed off that you got back to your senses and all that."

"Oh."

I nodded. "Yeah. Oh." I managed a low chuckle. "She liked you so much, she'd just about die for you."

"Or kill somebody," my brother clarified meaningfully. He paused in the middle of zippering his backpack. "Are you sure about that?"

My cheeks flushed with heat. "Erm, Jazz, you're not exactly the ugliest guy in the world."

"Very funny." He made a sound of disgust.

"Who's ugly?"

I whipped around at the new voice.

"Knock, knock," Aithne added with a mischievous grin.

"You-you-" I spluttered and groped for my infinite store of invectives. "I thought I put a magic bar on that door!"

The daughter of Hestia barked a gleeful laugh. "Obviously you forgot."

"And obviously the Firebrand has to get out!" I cried, pretending to shove her out the door again. Then we collapsed heavily on top of each other, grabbing one another's arms for support. Awkwardly we somehow managed to roll upright again.

"So what are you doing here at camp at _this_ time of year?" I demanded finally when I had caught my breath.

Her eyes twinkled. "Chiron might have mentioned something about a quest."

Jasper chuckled behind my back.

"Um, yeah," I muttered. "Did he tell you _why_?"

"Not exactly...'cause you see, he sent me an Iris-message oh-so-conveniently in the middle of my world history class, so he barely got the word 'quest' out of his horsey mouth before I had to swipe him out of existence. I didn't wait for him to contact me again-I hauled my dad out of work and made him drive me over here fast as he could."

I suppressed a hysterical giggle.

Aithne cocked a brow at me. "You were going to fill me in, weren't you?"

Immediately I sobered. "Percy and Annabeth are missing."

She gaped, crimson eyes wide open.

Jasper nodded gravely. "Annabeth went off to investigate why the moon has been waning for the last three months," he continued for me. "Chiron got a weird IM from Annabeth, but he couldn't hear anything. All he knows is that they both seem to be in danger."

Aithne whistled long and low. She turned back and began tentatively, "And...a prophecy?"

"Not _exactly_ a prophecy," I replied uneasily. "Persephone's pomegranates, it didn't have rhyme or meter. But it was a cryptic-_and_ creepy-message from, er, Demi."

Aithne's eyes shot to Jasper's face for confirmation. He nodded.

"It's here." I dug out the disgusting perfumed card from my back pocket and handed it to Aithne.

She crossed her legs Indian-style in her absent-minded state and scanned the script cursorily. She glanced up. "Why would Demi write something like this, though? Is she that much of a blockhead?"

I shrugged. "I don't know. I honestly didn't think of that. But I guess you're right."

"Demi's never really been a fan of subtlety," Jasper informed both of us. "Actually, bait-and-catch seems much more like her style. If ever...maybe the Fates made her put those clues in or something."

I made a face. This time it was my turn to say "Oh."

Aithne grimaced. "Whenever the Fates step in, the world turns into cripe."

I grimaced back in agreement. "Actually, the Fates _rule_ this word. That's why it _is_ cripe."

"Excellent point, amiga." She glanced around. "Where's Zac?"

My sigh of relief was audible. "He just got here. He's already informed about everything. I was seriously worried that Demi had already gotten to him."

Jasper opened his mouth then to say something, but then decisively shut it again. I shot him a curious look with eyebrows raised, but he shrugged and shook his head.

"Are you all packed?" I asked Aithne then.

She nodded, holding up her fiery vermilion backpack as tangible proof. "I actually singed some of my shirts in my..._excitement_, I guess you would call it. But that's nothing."

I laughed nervously. "I have some. Don't worry. And at least Percy is definitely _not_ around to make fun of you again."

We both rolled our eyes at exactly the same time again, setting off another wave of laughter that finally smoothed out the tension. Over my last quest that past summer, Percy had concocted some veritable mischief by poking fun at Aithne's fashion sense, resulting in a full battle on elemental scale which had required my, ahem, magical assistance.

"Then what are we waiting for?" I cried, the paragon of hyperactivity. "Let's go!"

I yanked the door half off its hinges, shoved Jasper by his broad shoulder out onto Half-Blood Hill, and raced the two of my friends full tilt to the bottom.

I~I~I~I~I

"Great. Everyone here," I panted the moment I had sprung into the back seat of the long van which the many-eyed and very alert Argus was now driving. I glanced over my companions again: Zac, Aithne, Jasper, and me. Four of us altogether. I couldn't help wincing to myself-Chiron had mentioned not too long before how other quests which did not have only three members had resulted in death.

I chewed my lip to a pulp in visible worry.

Just then Zac slid his arm round my shoulders. "We'll find them. Don't go worrying your pretty head off," he whispered with a lopsided smile.

I forced a grimace of acquiescence, and he snorted.

"It's the Hades part that bothers me," I whispered at last, and visibly he sobered. "I mean, the _Lord of the Dead_ is involved. He never was before."

"Do you think it's meant to mislead us?" Zac mused.

I shook my head vehemently. "Jazz and Aithne and I already talked about that. We all had to agree that Demi wrote that, plain and simple, to lure us straight into her lair-maybe it was just the Fates that put in that acrostic clue."

"So we're just going to walk into a trap, just like that?"

"We don't exactly have a choice here, Zac. Percy and Annabeth could literally be passing through Hades' judgment as we speak."

"Winnie," he reproached me gently.

"Sorry. I know you're scared of dark, morbid things."

He had to chuckle again. "That's not what I mean. I mean, Percy and Annabeth are still out there and alive. I _feel_ it. Remember, my dad is Apollo."

I nodded tacitly. My mouth felt suddenly dry. I was the daughter of the goddess of magic, but somehow talking of all these otherwordly affairs made me queasy now.

"Well, let me ask you something, O wise son of the god of prophecies," I said teasingly, and then became serious again. "What do you think Percy and Annabeth fou-"

I was cut off by Aithne's piercing scream.

I jackknifed to my feet-I'd forgotten my seatbelt in my worry-and whipped out my sword. It was already pulsing warmly in a throbbing, panicked blue. Monsters.

I glanced out to see the slobbering, sinister grins of seven coal-black monsters, as tall and twice as long as our van. Hellhounds.

With a wild yell, I slashed through the window and leaped out into the jaws of death.

**A/N: Okay, so the usual "cliffie" ending is pretty hackneyed, yada, yada, yada. But it's really the most effective way to end a chapter with a bang, if you know what I mean. So if you want me to update faster, REVIEW!**

**Stay happy, ~Katrina Mae**


	3. Chapter 3: Houndophobia

**A/N: Hola, peoples of FFN! Thank you so much to my newest fans and latest reviewers for their patience and support. Hopefully, this long and twisty new chapter won't disappoint you! Enjoy! =)**

Chapter 3: Houndophobia

I gripped the hilt of my glowing blue sword with both hands and brought it down smashing against the skull of the nearest slobbering canine from Hades. The hellhound howled and roared in rage-then something trickled down between its eyes, and it disintegrated in a puff of ashy gold dust.

"Winnie!"

I realized the insane screaming close behind me was a guy's voice-Zac's.

"Winnie, what exactly do you think you're doing?"

I whirled toward him, and at that moment my heart skipped a beat. One of the seven-foot monsters was looming directly above Zac's head, jaws wide open with saliva dripping, ready for the kill. Without thinking, I jabbed with my left hand and nabbed the growling hellhound cleanly between the eyes. It whoofed pathetically before coming down like its kinsman.

"Saving your stupid sunny butt, what'd you think?" I gasped for breath and slammed Zac out of the way with my body to avoid the hellhound soaring through the air toward us. It missed, hurtled straight over the van, and crashed resoundingly into the side of the cliff by the highway. I glanced away quickly-I hoped it had just conveniently committed suicide for us.

Zac was struggling violently under my grip. Finally he managed to fling me off, and none too gently at that. He too was panting and wheezing. "Why do you have your sword out? And what's with the shoving? There's no monsters. It's just dark." But the way he said it, I could tell from his voice that he was terrified to death.

I gaped at him. "Morpheus' mumblings, Zac, a hellhound was just about to bite your head off!"

"No, it wasn't," came Aithne's tremulous voice behind me.

I turned a little too quickly and was promptly rewarded with a wave of dizziness as the adrenaline drained out of me. I looked over Aithne's shoulder, and my jaw dropped-all the hellhounds were gone. But there was no time to wonder at this miracle; the terror in Aithne's huge crimson eyes was too much to ignore.

"Aithne?" I whispered.

"It's Ph-Phobos and D-D-Deimos," she stuttered. "The sons of Ares..."

I glanced around for help. Unfortunately, Zac seemed preoccupied groping for something in the dark while it was clearly broad daylight, and Jasper was sagging against the side of the van with the whites of his eyeballs turned up. I shuddered.

Aithne seemed to muster her strength. "They show you whatever you're afraid of," she informed me.

Oh. So Argus was inside the van, I assumed, confronting his own mortal fears-maybe getting his hundred eyes flushed down a Port-A-Potty.

It was then that I looked down at myself. "I don't _feel_ scared, though," I muttered cautiously, as if saying so would suddenly bring on a wave of fear.

But Aithne could not hear. She was gazing fixedly at some enemy precisely where my forehead would be, and she was whispering and sobbing soundlessly. Thoroughly frightened now by her behavior, I grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her roughly. "Aithne! Listen to me! What do you see? You have to fight it!"

"Don't...go away...DON'T YOU DARE TOUCH THEM!" she bellowed in a half-shriek. She stumbled backward and tread upon her own heels, but now she was mastering her face more and more, and she had drawn her dagger before her. Then she swiped forcefully in one strike and wiped out her vision of fear-also, incidentally, slashing my hand in two. I gasped and sprang away.

The misty look that had clouded over Aithne's eyes now swiftly lifted. Her eyes widened when she saw the hand I was clutching to my chest with thin crimson rivulets dripping down. "Oh, crap, Winnie, I'm sorry."

I gritted my teeth and stashed my hand in the pocket of my denim skirt. Then I rearranged my features into a more convincing expression of touch nonchalance. "It's okay. At least you got rid of your, er, fear. I'll have Zac look at this later...speaking of which, seems like we'd better help the others."

"I can go get Argus up," she offered.

I recognized then that what she actually needed was a few private moments; this was the first time in my whole lifetime having known her that I'd caught her with her guard down. Doubtless she would hate to have the others come around to see her tearstained face. I nodded shortly.

I went then and kneeled beside Zac, who was still scrounging around in the dirt.

"Zac," I sighed wearily, "it's Phobos and Deimos. You know about them, don't you?"

He looked up at me, and the fear in his golden eyes was frightening. "W-what?"

"Phobos and Deimos!" I almost yelled. "They're trying to intimidate you by showing you your worst fear!"

He seemed then to understand what I was saying; at least he was capable of forming coherent thoughts, it seemed. (Well, if he hadn't been, then I'd probably have broken up with him a long time ago for being a pretty blockhead.)

Zac sprang to his feet and seemed to throw his hand in the air-or punch it, with his fingers splayed, I wasn't so sure-and roared at the top of his lungs: "Veni lux!"

There was a blinding flash of light that even I felt, so hot and so intense that involuntarily I cried out. "Wha-"

Then the flash was gone-or else it wouldn't have been a _flash_, you know-and Zac was standing in the middle of the deserted highway, dusty and sweaty, with chest heaving, but his eyes clear and his face triumphant. He took a shuddering breath. "I did it," he whispered. Then he punched the air and whooped. "We did it!"

Laughing, I was swept into the mood and leaped into his arms. He whirled me around and around, and I wrapped my arms around his sweaty neck and kissed him full on the mouth.

We were duly interrupted by the reappearance of Aithne and Jasper, both looking haggard and drawn but sufficiently satisfied with themselves. Flushing and suppressing giggles of mortification, Zac and I pushed apart.

"How's Argus?" I asked brightly. "Did he get his eyes back?"

Aithne-more like the old daughter of Hestia whom I knew-cocked a brow at me. "How'd you know about that?"

I struggled to keep a straight face. "It's not exactly hard to guess, you know." I cleared my throat. "I know he hates to sleep with all his eyes closed because he thinks a pissed-off hero like Odysseus might gouge them out."

"Gods, we'd better check out the van and see if it's all right," exclaimed Jasper. He'd been clutching his long auburn tangles until now, and it was then when he turned in my direction that I saw the haunted look shadowing his eyes. Involuntarily I squeezed Zac's hand a little too hard, and he suppressed a yelp.

Indeed, the van was a wreck. The front end was completely crumpled inward, resembling an empty soda can that had been trampled on by an angry satyr. There was something smoking ominously from the bowels of the engine; Aithne took but a whiff of the air and a wrinkle of her nose before she promptly announced that something was burning. Before I could call out after her, she had disappeared behind the hood and was humming away, trying to suck out the energy of the burning thing before it could explode.

Personally, I felt a bit queasy about approaching a smoking vehicle waiting to burst into gas and flames, but Zac's determination drove me on. Swiftly I followed him inside, and together we gathered all our bags of supplies, which had been thrown around in the accident, so that we could carry them by foot. Some sticks of deodorant rolled about listlessly on the scorched carpet; I caught sight of one of my more precious potions heading swiftly toward the open door. I lunged after it and closed my fingers with a thump of my heart around the tiny neck of the turquoise glass bottle.

Zac chuckled as he pulled me to my feet. Huffily I set about dusting myself off, and was mildly dismayed to find my t-shirt streaked with gold hellhound ash down the front. "I thought those were just _visions_," I muttered.

Zac shrugged. "Yeah, well, some things can't be explained, can they?" He peered over my shoulder at the bottle still clutched in my palm. "What's that?"

"Healing potion," I explained lightly. "I've been working on it since last summer, you know, when Lady Gaia gave me this body. Seems like she gave me some new instinctual knowledge about potions, too. This is an extract from the River Lethe-er, don't ask me how I got it-and the water's got healing properties."

"Oh, right." He frowned. "But you always have _me_, you know. I'm a licensed healer. And...isn't the River Lethe actually supposed to make your memory blank?"

"Yup." I sighed. "That's exactly what I'm working on. I'm trying to extract that memory-wiping property and leaving the healing portion of the water behind."

"How can you tell?"

I took his hand and tugged him toward the sunlit doorway, then held up the bottle against the brilliant rays coming our way. The turquoise bottle flashed and sent ribbons of aquamarine shooting out in all directions.

With my free hand, I pointed at the faint rose-hued streaks tainting the potion. "Do you see those reddish ribbons? That's the memory-wiping magic. I'm moving along in my experiments to get it out."

Zac gave a low whistle. "Talented mage."

I rolled my eyes.

There was a sharp bang as the hood slammed home; then Aithne stuck her now rather greasy red head round the doorway and said tartly, "Hey, you slowpokes! The van's fixed now. At least, the explosive part of it. I have no idea if the crash was too severe for this thing to run." She frowned at a twisted tire, kicked it experimentally, and then swore under her breath. (I seconded the motion.)

I frowned back in my own turn. "Where's Argus?"

"Oh, I guess I forgot to tell you..." Aithne trailed off.

"He's back at camp," said Jasper smoothly, having made his own reappearance from Shadowland. (I suppose I ought to give him some credit for helping Aithne-he was even sweatier and greasier than she was.)

Zac coughed suddenly to hide his scowl. "Why'd he run off? He's supposed to be our guardian within a twenty-mile radius of camp."

"And, incidentally, our _driver_," I added.

"He, uh, kind of needed time off," Aithne stated with a sarcastic sigh. "Traumatizing visions, you know?"

Jasper at her side merely shrugged.

I peered furtively at my older brother again and was startled at the shadows lurking behind his normally sky blue irises. Aithne's wisecrack had sailed right past him-with Jasper, fears and visions were hardly a joke. And I thought then that I had quite a good guess what his greatest fear might be. He'd been possessed by his father Kronos before, and I knew it couldn't have been the most pleasant sensation in the world.

During my reverie, Jasper had disappeared from my line of vision; he was now crouching down amid the dripping, steaming mess of the van's unknown underside. A moment later his muffled voice announced, "I believe the van's irreparable."

A collective groan went up from the rest of us.

"Er, Winnie," began Zac tentatively, "I remember you _were_ able to teleport us via flying on one of our quests."

I bit my lip. "That was...wearisome."

"You've got a new body," he pointed out quite accurately.

I sighed and threw up my hands. All of a sudden I was just feeling so burdened and drained that at that moment my brain seemed to have clogged up on me. "Okay, _assuming_ that I were to endeavor to accomplish this feat of tiring magical strength, where would we go?"

"New York?" Aithne suggested most sensibly. "That was where Chiron got Annabeth's IM, right?"

I smote my forehead with a fist-causing Zac's face to reflexively crease with worry-and nodded. "Yeah, right. You're right, Aithne. Come on, you people, form a ring around me. This isn't going to be exactly pleasant."

I~I~I~I~I

I _told_ them it wasn't going to be exactly pleasant.

Of course, because this happens to be my life, nobody listened to me.

I ought to give them some credit, I suppose. After yelling at them a million times to stop yanking the ring every which way, they finally obeyed me and floated after me nervously through the sky. Jasper, of course, was most at ease-after all, he confided to me in a whisper, it wasn't half as bad as traveling through a time warp. That could get ten times more uncomfortable.

More to the point, due to my quest companions' stubbornness and rather pitiful lack of coordination, we ended our tug-of-war flight with-as usual-a less than flattering landing on our rear ends. After ploughing through some mucky dirt for approximately half a foot, we all accordingly took turns getting to our feet, dusting ourselves off, and taking stock of our surroundings.

"I wonder if this is exactly where we're supposed to be..." I glanced about anxiously. As it was, we stood in the centre of what appeared to be an abandoned train station, complete with ancient benches, long-ago-cleaved cobblestones, and rusty flaking rails. Only the distant sounds of the rushing city clued us in that we were somewhere in NYC.

Wait...

Just as my mind touched that thought, the air shimmered, and the whole station spun around us into a new image. We were in a shining, new, modern-looking subway.

And it happened to be packed with strange creatures.

Aithne was-get this-_gaping_.

A flaxen-haired, turquoise-eyed beauty flopped by us in a stream cut into the sidewalk. Oh gods, a mermaid. I looked around quickly and was confronted by what appeared to be baby Cyclops pushing his way rudely past me, earning me a slam against the wall that cracked my shoulder. In a breath's moment Zac's hand was on me, feeling for the hurt and sucking it out.

"We're in an Olympian underworld subway," Aithne summarised, quite succinctly.

"Well, I suppose this looks more like what was in the background of Annabeth's IM, from Chiron's description," I admitted slowly. Then my eyes widened. I pointed. "Look! That must be the fountain she used!"

We all surged forward, cutting across the crowd of floating and flopping strangers, and gathered round the base of what was a beautifully high and spouting fountain with stone statues of Aphrodite and her _lovely_ minions gazing down at us in their indifferent glory.

Jasper cleared his throat. "And look what we have here."

I swiveled round a few times before I realized he was already kneeling on the tiled floor. I followed where he was pointing-and let my jaw drop. (Well, slightly.)

Etched deep into the marble white tile were two symbols and two letters. They were clearly a three-pronged fork-a trident-and a roughly sketched owl. Below them was the inscription "MT."

"Trident and owl, that's obviously them-Percy and Annabeth-no question," Aithne was muttering at a furious pace. "But the letters...abbreviation for something...maybe initials...but how would she expect us to know who..."

"Maybe a _state_, anyone?" Zac cut in.

I grinned at him. "Yeah."

Aithne looked up from her Annabeth-esque muttering at that point to hazard a guess. "Minnesota?"

"No, that would be MS, wouldn't it?" replied Zac.

"MS is Mississippi," I informed both of them.

"So what _is_ the abbreviation of Minnesota? MA?"

"That's Massachusetts," Jasper pointed out.

"And don't say MO, either. That's Missouri," said I.

They all looked at me.

"How did you know that?" asked Zac frankly.

I rolled my eyes. "Have you all forgotten I can _read_ now?"

"Yeah. Right." Aithne went back to her muttering.

"I know," said Jasper suddenly. "It's Montana."

"Isn't that MN?" said Aithne dubiously.

"No, MN is Minnesota. MT is Montana."

"I thought Minnesota was MS."

"No, MS is Mississippi."

"Um, guys?" I cleared my throat. "I hate to break it to you, but unfortunately we've gone over this already. Also, Percy and Annabeth have a ninety-nine percent chance of being in mortal peril as we speak."

"Well said," remarked Zac. "What are we waiting for? Let's go!"

"I hope not by flying again!" I complained. "You people are suckers at balance."

"This is a subway," Aithne pointed out reasonably. "And look, there's a sign that says 'Half-Bloods Welcome' and 'Pay by Drachma'."

"Of which we have plenty," Zac informed us cheerily.

Jasper rolled his eyes at Zac's back and laid a brotherly arm round my shoulders. "Wish he weren't so much of a profligate," he confided.

I glanced up in surprise. "Why? Did he get me something expensive?"

A bit of his old, dashing smile flitted across his face. "Oops. Don't ask, and I won't tell. I mean, I can't."

"Hmph." I turned away again and let him lead me after Zac and Aithne, who were spiritedly arguing at the top of their lungs about the abbreviation for Maine. (I know, off the top of my head, that it's ME.)

I~I~I~I~I

_"Oneiro! Oneiropolos! Help me!"_

_ The golden-haired man was racing through the woods, following an ethereal path of flickering silver moonlight. He galloped past thickets and sharp boughs after the high, thin voice-a woman's voice-that had cried out in the night._

_ "Fegarri!" he yelled. "I'm coming!"_

_ Then he burst through the screen of indomitable trees into a clearing flooded with gold and silver light. He realized swiftly that the gold was not light-it was ichor._

_ "Fegarri!" he cried. In one swift bound of fluid movement, he crossed the distance to the red-haired woman locked in furious battle with an oversized hellhound wrapped round her shoulders. She was yelling commands in Greek at the top of her lungs, but nothing could be heard above the outraged growls of the beasts falling in upon her._

_ The golden-haired man wasted no time. He threw forth his hand and bellowed "Hypnos!" and a deep royal blue mist crept round the edges of the ring of hellhounds. One by one they all dropped to the ground, then disappeared through the scorched silver grass like the mist itself._

_ The redheaded woman was panting and sweating as she lay in the long trampled grass. The blond man rushed to her side and knelt down, touching her in different places with gentle hands. Swiftly the wounds beneath his fingers began to close up and heal, and the golden ichor running down her ruined white chiton were siphoned away into the air._

_ The man slipped a soft arm beneath her head and laid his other hand over her stomach. "Are you hurt anywhere else? How is he?"_

_ "I'm-fine," the woman gasped, and struggled to sit up. Her stomach, I noticed for the first time, was rounded and bulging. She shook the sweaty wild crimson waves from her face. "He is also well. But hurry. He-_he_ is coming."_

_ The two locked eyes, and in that second of eternity a silent understanding passed between them. The man lifted her to his feet and turned, just as there was an earshattering crash echoed by rumbles of earthquakes beneath their feet. The ground before them split jaggedly into a canyon, and a noisome black mist rose with a hiss._

_ The woman screamed-_

I~I~I~I~I

"Winnie! Winnie, wake up!"

The hoarse screaming shattered in my ears. I flew back to earth with a nearly painful thump in my head. Blearily I opened my eyes.

Zac leaned over me, eyebrows drawn together and lips parted in concern. The breath I heaved up caught in my throat-we were so close-

He reached forth a hand and gently wiped the drops of sweat from the side of my face. "Having bad dreams?"

I swallowed and nodded vigorously.

"Was it something you'd like to tell me?"

I took a long, shuddering breath that gave my lungs such a relief that I nearly cried. I steeled myself. I thought back over the dream, the two strange immortals with even stranger names, attacked by hellhounds and fleeing from a nameless enemy...what could it mean? As a daughter of the goddess of magic, I hardly needed my crystal ball nowadays anymore; occasionally I had prophetic dreams, but only of petty matters such as what Zac was going to wear the next day or who would sit next to me at lunch in school. Never before had I had such a heart-wrenching dream like this.

Would I only worry him?

Against my better judgment, I opened my mouth and said, "I was just remembering...him...Kronos." I swallowed again against the lie-then shuddered for real when I recalled the frightening hours I had spent in his personal isolation tank, bound and gagged and with nearly no hope of escape.

"I know it haunts you," he whispered, smoothing the stringy red hair from my face. An image of the red-haired immortal in my dream flashed across my mind.

I glanced about at our dim surroundings and found, to my relief, that it appeared I'd slept only a few hours into the night. The high-tech Olympian train was making its way swiftly and silently through brightly lit tunnels of darkness, where the gas lamps reflected off the windows and flashed in my eyes. Somehow the rhythmic sway of the train soothed me.

"Where are the others?" I asked.

Zac pointed wordlessly across the aisle toward Aithne and Jasper, who were slumped away from each other in cushioned seats just a few feet away, both their cans of soda or iced tea only half-finished. I could only imagine their exhaustion.

Zac seemed to know what I was thinking. "We'll never have peace as long as we live, you know." His lips pulled up into a small, wry smile.

I grinned back wearily. "I told Dad I hoped for peace, but he highly doubted that. And he was right."

He chuckled. His eyes shifted, and then his gaze fell on my right hand, with which I had been absently playing with my seat belt. He took in the crusted blood, the scabbed slash, and demanded, "When did you get this?"

"Imaginary hellhound fight," I said glibly. I would hate to admit that Aithne had given me the injury while fighting her own vision of fears.

"You should have showed me earlier."

"Yeah. I forgot." I held it out to him. "Is it very deep?"

"Not really," he said, to my relief, for the wound still stung, having entered the crease of my palm. "I could give you ambrosia..."

"Don't. Save it for the greater injuries. Who knows what we'll have to face ahead."

"Yeah." He took a deep breath. "Yes, you're right. Well, I can clean up the blood and make it heal a little faster with my own power, though it may not reduce the pain."

"That's fine," I murmured, and tiredly leaned my head back against the seat pillow with my injured hand stretched out to him. I felt his own large hands take my bony one gently and probe at it; then a warm tingling flowed from his fingers to mine, and I could tell already that it was going to get better soon. There was a series of rustles and soft caresses as he took a clean wad of cloth and wound the bandage around the middle of my hand. He tied it securely and laid my hand back down on my lap, at the same time patting my hair. I opened my eyes a fraction again.

"I was so worried about you," I whispered. "When I saw Demi's note."

"I know." His Adam's apple bobbed in an audible swallow. "I saw your eyes."

I sighed. "Come here."

He leaned back toward me, and with my clean left hand I traced with a finger the noble features of his profile. A smile flickered across his face. Then he shifted and kissed me, softly and lightly, on the lips. I sighed again and pulled him closer, and soon we were kissing again, deeper and more passionately.

As we broke away from each other to catch our breath, I felt my mind gently fog over, filling me with warm golden images of our love, a stronghold against the dark visions I had had. It was a refuge I could trust in-Zac was always there for me.

But at the moment, I felt slightly guilty, for I had told him not only one lie, but two. I hadn't told him what else I'd seen back at the subway station by the fountain: on the tile a few feet away from the trident and owl, I had sighted another drawing, darker and clearer and more sinister.

A set of scales, with swords crossed upon it.

**A/N: ...And as always, you are all invited to give me your guesses, thoughts, and opinions in a review! Please tell me what you think, and I hope you liked it a lot. Stay tuned for the next installment-I promise the chapters will get better and better. Meanwhile, please feel free to explore all my other fanfics, which have been crafted with equal care. Thanks! =)**


	4. Chapter 4: Baffling Badass Buffoon

**A/N: I know. I'm breaking the rules. But I just couldn't help posting another chapter of this particular fanfic, since currently it's my second favorite (my first is **_**Black Light**_**). But I promise I will get back into my routine of updating my other fanfics after this! Also, I'm writing a long Harry Potter fanfic, which will be posted either when it's half-done or when it's completely done, so keep a lookout for that one (it will be called **_**Alphabet of Curses**_**).**

**Anyway, I hoped you all liked the last chapter (though no one reviewed =[ ). Hope you enjoy this one! =)**

Chapter 4: Baffling Badass Buffoon

I knew I was being an idiot.

My boyfriend Zac Heyerdahl was the son of Apollo, god of prophecies, for crying out loud! If I told him that I'd seen the symbol of Nemesis in that tile next to Percy and Annabeth's, he would-inevitably-know what to do. Last summer, I had received hate mail from Demi Cochemagne, that same evil daughter of Aphrodite who wrote this last note, and she promised she'd get back Jasper somehow. See, they had something between them when they were both...er..._bad_. Well, as you can see now, Jasper's good, but Demi's still as bad as ever. Maybe even badder. (It's an expression. Don't correct me.)

But who knows why I did what I did? That's pure Wynter Popplewell for you: freakishly hyper and does a hell lot of things before even thinking. I swear that must be my fatal flaw. (Maybe my flaw before was being possessed by Kronos. But somehow this one seems even worse.)

As the train rocked back and forth like a crib on its way to Montana, I nestled closer into Zac's arms with my head on his lap. Pretty soon he was snoring, while I closed my eyes and pretended to sleep. Each time I closed my eyes, though, images of fire and moonlight clashed behind my eyelids. Every once in a while I would shift and open my eyes again, only to have Zac wake up quickly and ask if everything was all right. Being a superbly evil liar (remnants of the orphan gypsy I was before), I would merely yawn and nod and close my eyes again.

I was dreaming again, this time that I was strapped to some sort of seat that was soft and hard at the same time. Somebody was screaming loudly in my ears. I wanted to smack the person and tell her to shut the hell up.

Then I realized it was me screaming.

I could see now, in a dazzlingly bright light, that I was strapped down in the back of an airplane, with empousa-esque stewardesses gliding back and forth past me in a surreal utopia of delicious smells and tinkling laughter. But why was I still screaming?

I kicked and thrashed to set myself free. And then I knew why: the plane was losing altitude. It was going to crash. As soon as this epiphany hit me, the visions of white light and laughing people vanished like paper sucked into a vacuum, and I was enveloped in darkness.

The screaming became louder. I could see a patch of light ahead through a tiny window, but it wasn't light-it was the ground rushing up toward me, ready to swallow me, bury me in Hades...

"Winnie!"

I bolted upright with a loud cry and promptly banged my head against Zac's chin witha resounding crack. He gasped and fell back in his seat, rubbing his jaw. Then he peered at me anxiously. "Are you all right?"

I licked my lips, but my tongue was dry. I nodded vigorously.

Zac brushed the hair from my eyes and with his thumb wiped away the salty tracks of tears I'd unconsciously shed in my nightmare. "What was it? What did you dream of?"

_Wynter_, spoke a cool woman's voice in my head.

I gasped aloud. _Mother?_ It was rare nowadays that Hecate entered my head, and when she did, it was always urgent.

_You and your friends must get off this train _now.

_ Why?_ I demanded. _It's the quickest way to Montana-_

_ Just do as I say, Wynter. There will be an attack on this train if you do not get off this instant. Now GO!_

I lost no time. Ignoring Zac's wide-eyed confusion, I leaped to my feet, grabbed his hand and my backpack, and shouted, "Aithne! Jazz! Everyone, up! We have to get out of here!"

Aithne flew awake in an instant; Jasper thrashed about under his blanket and upset his soda before coming to, but the moment our eyes met, an understanding passed between us, and he swept up his backpack and dashed past after Aithne.

"Winnie, how are we going to get off? This is a bullet train!" Zac shouted to my back.

I grabbed his hand which I'd momentarily let go of and dragged him to the window. "Come on, everybody, hold each other's hand. Yeah, Jazz, take my hand. Everyone close their eyes and concentrate on a grassy meadow with daffodils and pine trees. Focus! When I say _now_, jump with me!" I hauled them all to the very windowsill and placed my own right foot on the ledge as if ready to leap through the glass and break my head. I'd only done this teleportation once before, and only by myself, but I trusted my mother's instincts and my magic. It was now or never.

"NOW!"

The leap was like a collective deep breath. There was a whoosh and a sigh of the wind cutting past our faces. Then I felt a sharp tug like a fish hook somewhere behind my navel-someone wasn't following. With the adrenaline beginning to pound through my head, I frantically scrambled back in my mind, trying to sense the missing presence. Jasper! I could see his aura, a smoldering glow of purple standing paralyzed in the dark. I envisioned myself, a blue flame, racing toward him and engulfing him. I dragged him back with me through the darkness, toward that window in the black world with the promise of sunshine and daffodils and a cool breeze...

All four of us landed with a huge "Oof!" on our butts in the center of the grassy clearing.

Zac was the first to pick himself up. "Winnie!" he breathed, drinking in the beautiful sights all around him. "Where are we? And-and how did you _do_ that?"

I flushed a deep shade of magenta and busied myself hugging Jasper to make sure he was in one piece. "I just kind of..._knew_," I said at last, turning to hug Aithne. I turned back to face Zac, who was eying me with a mortifying degree of admiration. "Remember that clearing where we pitched camp before? When Aithne and Percy were fighting using fire and water, and I had to use magic to stop them?"

Zac's brow darkened, but he merely nodded. Neither of us had to mention that that was the clearing where I'd tried to commit suicide to escape the painful possession of Kronos.

"Well," I continued, swallowing, "as you recall, I also used illusory magic to cover up the flooded and scorched parts. And it looked like this." I gestured vaguely at the panorama in which we stood.

Aithne chuckled. "Just like you use illusory magic to get a good mark on cabin inspection."

I rolled my eyes. "Anyway, I found out something really cool while I was doing my research and experiments: once a child of Hecate has used magic to change the appearance of a place, it becomes a hidden place. A secret portal."

Zac was gaping and smiling at the same time, if that was even possible. Jasper was grinning-actually grinning-and flipping me a thumbs-up. "But," I interrupted their muted cheers, "unfortunately, I cannot teleport us to Montana like that. It only works on places that you've been to before and remember very clearly."

"How come we were all able to arrive here, even though we didn't quite know what clearing you were talking about?" Zac asked.

"We _almost_ all arrived here," I corrected him. "Those of us who were from the quest still remembered the clearing in the backs of their heads. Sorry, Jasper-I forgot. You weren't with us that time."

Jasper flushed and nodded, still smiling.

Aithne quirked up a brow. "What happened to him?" she asked briskly, jerking her head in Jasper's direction.

"I had to go back and drag him with me," I stated simply.

I was rewarded with three blank looks.

"Oh, um, I guess it's something you all couldn't see, since I was the one who opened up the portal. I ran back in my head and grabbed Jasper's aura..." I bit my lip and frowned. "Did I ever mention that you all have auras?"

Aithne shrugged noncommittally; Jasper nodded calmly. Zac's expression at that moment was priceless.

"No?" I grinned at them, enjoying the moment. "Of course Jazz can see your auras, too" -I winked at him, and he winked back- "but we _all_ have them. Jazz is purple, I'm blue, Aithne's orange, and you, Zac...are golden." I stood on tiptoe to peck him on the cheek. His look of surprise melted into a loving gaze, and he twined one arm around my waist.

"Wait," said Aithne. "I thought all demigods have auras, anyway. How come we can't see the colors you see?"

"Well," said I, "actually, _everyone_ has an aura, even mortals. Satyrs and demigods can all sense each other's auras, right? But no one else's. Children of Hecate can see the auras of both mortals and demigods; the difference is that mortals have whitish or silver or colorless auras, while demigods have colored ones."

"But you never saw any of this before," Zac objected.

"Yeah. I know." I scratched my head. "Powerful new body, remember?"

"Ah." He grinned. "So Jasper here can see auras already, because he doesn't have any mortal blood in him."

"Correct," said Jasper. Then he added in a low undertone, "Though I wish."

I reached out quickly and patted his arm. His face lightened up a bit.

"Okay," I said brightly, straightening to face them all. "Now this clearing is somewhere in the middle of Colorado."

"Way off course," Aithne confirmed with a nod.

I rolled my eyes. "Thanks for that, Ms. Overexplainer. Anyway, like I said, I don't know any part of Montana, so I can't just teleport us. Also, I just used up about ninety percent of my magic energy teleporting four people here, so I can't fly us either."

"Aren't you just afraid of us crashing again?" Zac teased.

I shoved him. "No, really. So now we have to find the nearest airport, _somehow_. We'll take it from there."

"Hey, why did we have to leave the train anyway?" Aithne said. "You just woke us all up and told us to to jump out the window. What was all that about?"

I flicked my gaze at Jasper; our eyes locked. He gave the tiniest of nods.

"My mom spoke to Jazz and me. There was going to be an attack on the train."

"Attack? By who?" demanded Aithne.

I bit my lip. "By _whom_."

"I know! But you're evading the question."

I sighed. "I can't really tell you."

"It seems like you have an idea who, though," Zac interjected.

I was silent for a long moment. Then, very slowly, I said, "I'm coming into an epiphany right now."

There was utter silence then throughout the clearing for a full two minutes. Finally, with a rustle of muddy denim, I straightened and announced, "It all makes sense. The subway is underground. The attack would be led by Hades."

Jasper nodded. "Because we figured Nemesis and Hades were in this together somehow."

"Yeah." I glanced at Zac, who was now frowning-probably at the recollection of his dream about Demi hosting the spirit of Nemesis. "But why would he be _attacking_ us instead of _luring_ us to help Demi?"

"Now _that_," replied Aithne with precision, "is an _excellent_ question, mi amiga."

"I do wish you'd quit it with the Spanish," I complained.

"Why, does it bother you that I know a language you don't?"

"Conclusion-jumping pogo sticks. I know some languages myself."

"Oh, yeah?" Aithne cocked a brow skeptically. "Like what?"

"Winnie-the-Pooh Gobbledygook, for one, and I could name quite a few dialects that stem from it." I folded my arms. "Now what about that question?"

"What question?" said Zac.

"To wit, why would the Lord of the Dead be attacking us instead of luring us?" Jasper reminded him.

"Hm," all three of us said at the same time.

"Unless," said Zac slowly, "it's _not_ Hades."

I chewed both lips simultaneously as I digested this. "Who, then?"

"Somebody trying to stop us from getting to Percy and Annabeth, either to protect us from Demi, or to defeat us," Jasper summarized.

"If they were trying to _help_ us," I reasoned, "then why the heck in Zeus's zaniness would my own mother warn me against this attack?"

"This is confusing. Ugh!" remarked Aithne, quite succinctly.

I~I~I~I~I

The stern steel-haired stewardess peered down the bridge of her half-moon glasses at the bedragged four of us with her cold iron eyes. "Tickets?" she asked, and quite dubiously at that, almost as if expecting us not to have any. Jupiter's juggling juiceboxes, I'd give anything that she _knew_ we had no tickets.

I pulled my best stricken, grieving face. "Look, we've lost our mom and dad, and our uncle-they were supposed to be on this plane, going to Helena, Montana-but the four of us lost them in the crowd, and then we stopped for directions, and then we got mugged, and we lost most of our stuff and our money..." I trailed off and pulled out a tentative tear down my cheek.

The stewardess merely blinked.

"...And I have no idea where our tickets are," I finished lamely.

Finally the stewardess bothered herself to move a muscle and raised a fine black eyebrow. "All four of you? Which gang were you mugged by?"

I sighed and rolled my eyes the moment I had turned my back to her. Why couldn't I lie better nowadays?

"You're losing your touch, little sis," Jasper chuckled.

I shot him a glare. "Shut up!" My magic energy was far from restored, but it seemed this little old tough cookie gave me no choice. Muttering under my breath some words in Greek, I waved my hand in her face, and almost instantly her cold grey eyes glazed over. "You may go to your seats," she announced robotically.

The four of us hurried up the ramp-definitely the last ones to hitch a ride-and just before turning round the corner into the plane, I snapped my fingers with another whisper, and the stewardess returned to normal, this time blinking owlishly in the bright light. Now she would never recollect four lying, bloody teenagers straggling up the ramp.

"Hey, Winnie?" Aithne spoke hesitantly.

"Yeah?"

"Could we, er, change clothes?"

"Sure, as soon as we get into the bathroom," I replied absently.

"No, I mean, like, get _cleaned up_ before even entering the plane."

I turned to look at the daughter of Hestia fully. She somehow had a scratch down the side of her face, and the butt of her jeans was a sorry sight. Not to mention her flaming hair-which was the catastrophe of a daily disaster. The realization hit me with a smack in the face. "Oh! Right! By magic!" Murmuring some more words in Greek, I waved my hand quickly over each one of us-including myself-and presently we were all standing in brand new versions of our clothes and packs, with hair washed and combed, looking as if we'd all just stepped out of a cheesy shampoo commercial.

With pearly white smiles plastered on our faces, we marched past row after row of blasé passengers to a perfect group of four seats for ourselves. We threw ourselves in without further delay.

Just then, I had a truly sinking sensation in the deepest pit of my gut.

"NO!" I screamed.

Zac's head whipped around to me. "Winnie, what the heck are you doing?"

I clawed at my seatbelt and finally managed with a wild slash to cleave it apart. "Everybody, make for the window!"

"Wynter Popplewell! CRAP WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?" Aithne yelled.

Even Jasper was ogling at me.

"It was a trick!" I cried. "A dirty trick! She got into my mind! The plane's going to crash, I dreamed it, now everybody jump!"

"I say, jumping out the window just made our chances of death go from twenty percent to a hundred!" yelped Zac. He grabbed my wrist and yanked me backward with an amazingly powerful grip, but I fought like a wildcat and scratched blindly about till he had to let me go. I had no choice now-I was going to burn up all the rest of my reserve magic energy to cast _both_ a binding spell _and_ a floating cloud spell.

"Hecate bind / Three souls to mine!" I shouted, then rattled off right into the next charm: "Please carry me / Wherever we choose / And save these three / From darkness' ruse!"

In a flash, we were all outside the plane, hovering about a thousand feet above the earth in a fluffy lavender cloud.

Zac stared wide-eyed at me. "This was like last time!"

"Yeah, what deja vu, huh?" I giggled as I remembered the last time we'd tumbled out of a plane and been caught by a fluffy purple magic cloud to carry us to safety. That had been months ago, on my very first quest.

Aithne was likewise goggling at me. "That spell was amazing! How'd you know those words? Just from memory?"

I flushed guiltily. "Er, no. Made it up on the spot." At their admiring looks, I said quickly, "Trust me, it would never have worked with my old body."

"You put an awful lot of faith into that body of yours," Zac noted with amusement.

My brow swiftly darkened. "Nope. Not anymore."

They exchanged glances. Jasper spoke. "What do you mean?"

"That voice I heard was _not_ my mom's. It had to be Nemesis."

Aithne changed her gasp midway into a swear word I discreetly choose not to repeat here.

"So..." I could almost hear the gears in Zac's head whirring to life. "So Nemesis lured us off the train, knowing we would get onto this plane, and it would crash and potentially kill us all."

"_Definitely_ kill us all," I corrected him hastily. "And now I've got it figured out. Demi did not write the note."

Now their eyes all turned to saucers. "_What_?"

I was so excited in this new revelation that my own words tumbled out over each other squealing. "Remember the crossword that spelled NEMESIS-HADES? And how the note seemed to be both a threat and a clue at the same time? Well, I think _that_ was my mother. But this is a very, very dangerous game we're playing. Somehow there's an illusory charm on the note." I dug it out of my pocket-thankfully it had not been slashed away in my semi-imaginary tussle with the hellhounds-and waved my hand over it confidently now, intoning, "O paper here / Please show the words / Which Master Fear / Has made absurd." Swiftly then the paper morphed into a scrap of parchment (thankfully odorless) with more or less the same words, but this time in an older woman's flowing script. And now it was signed "Hecate."

I leaned back with an (almost) smug smile.

At their mixed looks of confusion, I explained shortly, "I did not make that one up."

"_Dare cheat the game you chose_," Aithne whispered, as she reread the note from over my shoulder. "Your mom was warning you."

"Pretty much." I sighed. "I should have paid more attention to my dream."

"What dream?" said Zac quickly.

"Well, remember when I woke up screaming on the train? I had a dream that I was in a plane that was about to crash. But just as you woke me up, Nemesis' voice got into my head and told me to leave the train."

"So now we've got Nemesis and Hades trying to _destroy_ us, not lure us," Jasper said, once more the paragon of minimal words. "They don't want us to find Percy and Annabeth and discover whatever it is they've found out."

"Yup. That just about sums it all up, doesn't it?" Then, just as we all turned to each other to share hugs and laughs of relief, who-or rather what-should come hurtling our way but a cackling, howling Fury.

In one sweep of her arm and her whip, she knocked me flailing off the cloud screaming toward earth below.

Because life is never fair, you know?

**A/N: I don't know why the ending sounds alternately cheesy and cracking funny, depending on what time of day I read it. Ah, well. REVIEWS ARE MORE THAN WELCOME! This Mad Hatted Author will dance zanily to zumba the very millisecond her first review comes in, so please go ahead and click that simply **_**adorable**_** grey and blue button down there...go on...YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO.**

**Incidentally, I'm giving out slices of my perfectly delightful iced carrot cake to anyone who tells me their thoughts. =)**

**~TOIMI**


	5. Chapter 5: Meet the EighthBlood Nurse

**A/N: Again, so sorry for the exorbitant delay in updates lately. Like I stated in my last update for **_**Dearest**_**, I've been having trouble with the Internet and my FF account, but now it's fixed and all good. I promise I will **_**try**_** to update more regularly now, especially since school's almost over. Anyhow, I hope you liked the last chapter (though hardly anyone reviewed =[), and please continue reading! Enjoy!**

Chapter 5: Meet the Backwoods Eighth-Blood Nurse

Okay, let me get this straight.

In the span of less than twenty-four hours, I'd lied for the first time to my boyfriend, gotten brain-manipulated by the goddess of revenge, cast more spells on humans than my magic energy could replenish, jumped out of a fast-moving vehicle at least twice, and come into a huzzah conclusion about my quest-only to be knocked off a _cloud_ by a wizened little _Fury_.

Counting out the couple hundred bones I was going to break within the next two minutes, I was already having a very bad day.

The scream that tore from my throat was lost completely in the raging wind. I couldn't believe anyone could possibly fall that fast-one minute I was chatting with my quest mates, and the next I was hurtling head over heels through the moist rainclouds, watching my purple cloud of floating friends fade within seconds from a speck to utter nothingness.

Incidentally, I could also look down and see that I was going to skewer myself on a pine tree.

One of the amazing things about my new body was that it chose _now_, of all times, to pass out completely in midair. Maybe my brain had a way of shutting down to avoid facing a painful, crushing death. At any rate, I don't remember anything except waking up in a bed of overgrown grass in a tiny clearing ringed tightly by dark and menacing pine trees.

I glanced up at the sky: it was swiftly growing dark. I must have been unconscious for hours since my fall. Memory instantly came flooding back to me, and with a surge of hate I could hardly suppress the urge to wring that little Fury's neck. At the same time, I was unbearably worried about my friends. Did they know where I was? Where was the cloud going to take them? Would I even be able to find them again?

Reflex made me move to pick myself up, and an even stronger reflex made me nearly yell with pain. A couple dozen things were definitely broken inside me-maybe a few ribs, a wrist, probably even some of my arm. The first thing I could think of to do then was curse that witchy Fury.

When I had gone through my exhaustive list of invectives more than five times, I sensibly tried to get my bearings. I figured I was somewhere between New England and the far Midwest; then I realized that that was a rather broad range of states. All I could tell now was that the area was heavily wooded.

My disconsolate mullings were interrupted by the faint, distant zoom of tires on a gravel path. My ears pricked up. A road! That must mean there was some kind of town nearby. I had only one choice-putting a new twist to the word, you know-and that was to try to reach civilization.

Slowly, painfully, I hauled myself up by my uninjured arm and forced my eyes away from the purplish bruises to focus on my surroundings, which had begun to spin around from the effort of getting up. I tested my feet and winced at a twisted ankle. Gritting my teeth, I stolidly made my way through the thick curtain of scratchy pine boughs, into the darkness toward the road beyond.

Twenty painful and breathless minutes later, I burst free of the forest with a rush of cruelly cold, wet night air. I sucked it brutally into my lungs and surveyed my accomplishments.

"Hello?" I called tentatively into the empty road. "Hello-o-o-o-o!" There was some weird kind of stone barrier on the other side of the primitive dirt highway-acting as a screen against wild animals, I suppose-which took my voice and threw it back at me mockingly.

Exhausted, I flopped into the dust on my bum, hardly even bothering to holler anymore at the bruise on my butt. I laid my head back against the nearest prickly pine tree and allowed my body to finally drift in and out of consciousness. If a monster was going to come looking for me, the last place on earth would be the pine-sprinkled, gravel-strewn, humanity-abandoned backwoods of Anytown, USA.

"...Hello? Hullo! Hullo!"

I moaned and struggled from the cushioned depths of my stupor back toward the voice. Was that me still calling? No, I was pretty sure I didn't talk in my sleep.

The voice actually seemed to be two calling at once, one growing farther and the other coming nearer. I finally roused myself to groan a bit louder.

"Hello? Anyone here?"

The voice came from right behind me. The person stopped and gasped. "Mom! Mom! Over here, quick! Somebody's hurt!" She turned back to me. "Are you okay?"

My eyelids had crusted over; it took an enormous effort to crack them open. All I could see anyway in my hazy vision was a small, bony, heart-shaped face with huge electric blue eyes staring down at me in frightful concern. It was a little girl, quite soon joined by a taller woman, presumably her mother. I must have muttered something extraordinarily intelligent at this point, because then the woman stated matter-of-factly, "It's no use talking to her, Chloe. She's delirious. C'mon, get her head up."

"...'Mnot d'lirious," I mumbled fuzzily. "Th' Fury..." I yelped sharply when Chloe jostled my broken arm in trying to grasp my shoulders.

"Careful," said the woman. "Here, I'll take that end. You take her legs instead. Nothing seems broken down there."

Gratefully I let the woman's much gentler hands take my trunk while the girl struggled with my legs. I was aware of a rhythmic swinging sensation as the mother and daughter lugged me between them over the uneven dirt ground. Then I passed out completely.

I~I~I~I~I

The most inglorious cause of my reawakening was the feel of water dribbling down my nose. My eyes snapped open; I immediately saw that there was a damp sponge pressed against my forehead. I squirmed, but a foreign hand pressed me down.

I blinked in the suddenly bright light. Was it already morning? A glance to the side confirmed my guess as I registered birds chirping and flowers reopening in the early sunlight.

"You got knocked about pretty badly there," came the woman's voice from before.

Quickly I sought the source of the voice and found young woman seated at my bedside, barely thirty years old, with silky caramel hair and soft hazel eyes. She smiled at my bewilderment and removed the sponge briefly to wring it out into a metal basin. "You don't remember much, do you?"

Uncertainly I shook my head.

"My daughter heard somebody calling down the road while she was playing in the yard. She dragged me out searching, and we found you delirious by the highway."

I frowned and squinted, trying-unsuccessfully-to recall why this woman seemed familiar to me. "Thank you," I murmured.

The woman simply nodded. "I'm Anelise."

"Wynter," I mumbled back.

Anelise's hand was coming up to wipe the moisture from my forehead, but she paused. "You say a Fury did this to you? I would say I'd sense it if a monster were in the area."

I couldn't understand what she was saying at first. Then my ice blue eyes widened, and I sat up quickly. "Are you a half-blood?"

Anelise firmly pushed me back against the pillows. "Actually, more like eighth-blood," she grinned. "Mostly mortal heritage. I'm the great-great-granddaughter of Apollo, bless his name." The sky overhead rumbled softly at the name.

So that was why she seemed familiar. The luminous glow of her tan skin and the soft shine in her eyes matched Zac's almost exactly. I supposed Apollo's descendants tended to have dazzling faces and caretaker's syndrome.

"My boyfriend," I muttered. "He's...he's a son of Apollo."

Anelise knit her brows in confusion. "Which reminds me, what were you doing out all alone?"

I struggled to keep consciousness. The white bed was unbearably soft, and my body was crying for me to sleep again. "I was with my friends," I said, more loudly. "My brother and my boyfriend and a girl. We were on a quest...we escaped from a crashing plane. I made a cloud for us, but the Fury came out of nowhere and knocked me off."

"So that explains the broken bones." Anelise grinned crookedly. "From the looks of you, you can't be an inept warrior. I'm pretty sure an old winged hag wouldn't be able to snap your body around so easily."

I flushed silently.

"Is the quest a secret?" she pursued.

I shook my head, then stopped abruptly when it started to hurt. "No. We're trying to find two of our friends, Percy and Annabeth. We got an IM-"

"Percy and Annabeth?" Anelise's jaw had dropped.

I stared at her in consternation. "Do you know them? They're around my age, though-I didn't think you would know them from camp-"

"I'm of Apollo's blood," she said.

I just looked at her.

"...I had a vision about them, a long time ago. When I was-oh, gods, years ago. I was seventeen. I warned Sally, Percy's mother, that there was some kind of prophecy her son would be involved in. My friend Rick also collaborated with me to write a novel...based on my visions and dreams."

My eyebrows shoved together. "Wow. There's a book about Percy and Annabeth?"

She nodded. Then her eyes twinkled. "A couple of books, actually. You could take a few copies back with you when you're fully healed."

These last words brought me up short. I tentatively tried to move my arm, which I noticed only now was bound and in a sling. "How long, do you think?"

Anelise shrugged. "Oh, you seem like a fast healer. I always have a stock of nectar and abrosia for my daughter, and I used some on you. So maybe two more days, the most."

I studied her keenly. "Does you daughter also have Apollo's magic?"

She smiled. "Oh, no. She's as clumsy as a puppy and hates being around sick people. Her father's Zephyrus."

My eyes widened again. "You mean-you-you know-" I stumbled over my own words and flushed in embarrassment.

"It's all right. Yes, actually, he and I got married. Then...he had to go." She couldn't help a tiny sigh at the end.

I felt the blanket of drowsiness beginning to envelope me again. In vain I tried to stifle a yawn. Anelise was not fooled; she glanced back at me sharply and said, "I'm tiring you out unnecessarily with all this talk. Rest some more. I'll come and wake you up for dinner."

I nodded vaguely and then slipped into blissful sleep for real once more.

I~I~I~I~I

It seemed barely a second later that the tinkling of a silver bell shattered my dreamless dreams. By Orion's orneriness, couldn't a soul get some rest around here?

The little crow-haired, blue-eyed girl who had first found me by the highway promptly thrust her inky head round the doorway. "Oh, you're awake, I see!" she trilled. "Mom was going to come up to fetch you for dinner if you feel up to it, but she's kind of busy with the chicken and all, so I thought I'd see how you're doing."

"Not too bad," I admitted, "considering that I've been burned, pummeled, brainwashed, knocked out, and crushed up in a blender a few times within the last one and a half days. Not to mention annoyed by a hospitable midget. What's for dinner?"

I guess my abrupt switch of topics suited the girl's style: she grinned. "Can't you smell it? Roast chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy and lingonberries. Oh, and I'm Chloe, by the way."

I squinted at her eensy frame. "Reckon you're strong enough to help me up?"

Her chest puffed out indignantly. "For your information, I am a full eleven and a half years old!"

I muttered something unintelligible under my breath then-she could be mistaken for a third-grader. But all was forgiven; with a series of chirpy happy sounds, Chloe flitted to my side, threw back the covers, and held out a pale bony arm to support me. Somehow I managed to get on my feet and totter with her toward the door. Apparently sometime before, Anelise had bathed me and given me a spare change of clothes, which were somewhat long on me. I suspected they were hers.

"Welcome back to earth!" Anelise caroled when she turned from buttering the chicken and sighted me leaning uncertainly by the doorway. She gestured for me to join her and Chloe at the table and help myself to the simply mouthwatering dinner, paired with a sublime aroma. (How could I refuse?)

In between bites, Anelise finally spoke up, "So, Wynter, do your friends know where you are? Do you think you need to IM them to tell them you're safe?"

This brought me up short. All the worries and anxieties and fears of the last few hours came crashing back over me. "No," I whispered. "I have no idea where they are, or where I am...for that matter. I made the magic purple cloud for them, but I'd planned to steer it...now without me..."

Sensing a stage of hyperventilation setting on, Anelise leaned across the table and laid a tanned hand on my arm. Almost immediately a delicious sense of peace and well-being flowed into me. I recalled Zac's healing powers from his Apollo heritage.

"Listen," said Anelise. "You're safe and healing, and that's what matters for now. As for where you are, I can at least tell you that. You're in Michigan. Chloe and I were visiting around; this is our summer home."

I looked at her and just nodded, my throat too tight to speak.

"I think at least one more night of complete rest will do you good," she went on. "Then we'll figure out a way to contact your friends."

A desperate plan was unraveling in my head. I wondered-quite irrationally, actually-whether I had even done anything to offend Iris, the goddess of rainbows, and if she would honor one small demigod's prayer like mine. If only she could show me what had happened to my friends...

Awkwardly I spooned food into my mouth with my right hand. Anelise had thoughtfully slice up my chicken, though-I wondered absently if she actually worked as a nurse, and if this was why she was unusually sensitive to patients' needs. Or maybe it was just the instinct in Apollo's blood. This thought inevitably led to colorful images of Zac and me-laughing, eating, talking, hugging, fighting, crying, shouting, even kissing. The montage sent pangs and shivers down through me. I hoped to high Olympus-even to Hades' realm-that Zac and the others were all safe.

"More gravy?" said Anelise quickly, sighting the glisten in the corners of my eyes.

I glanced up and attempted a smile. "No, thanks, it's all right...oh, why not." After all, gravy had a peculiarly soothing effect on one in distress. Without thinking, I flicked my right wrist just as I would at the dinner table at home with Dad and Jasper, and the pitcher of gravy slid from the opposite end of the table to mine.

A clatter of silverware brought me back to reality. Little Chloe's saucer eyes were larger than tires, and even Anelise seemed a little stunned. "S-sorry," I stammered. "I didn't mean to frighten you. I'm sorry-"

Anelise cracked so suddenly into a grin then that I wondered if I was hallucinating. "So. Magic. Hecate's blood, right?"

I nodded mutely.

The young woman waved a hand that was so light it seemed to float, suspended, in the air like a down feather before drifting back to her side. "Don't worry about Chloe. She's seen too much magic around me, anyway. It's not like she's oblivious."

I nodded again. Then I hid my scarlet cheeks by busying myself with the ladle.

"Do you know where you're going?" Anelise began again.

"Huh?"

"I mean your quest. Do you know where to find Percy and Annabeth?"

"Actually, yeah, we do." I remembered the letters they'd scrawled across the tiles in that Olympian subway. And then another image crept up behind me in my mind, darker and more sinister-the charcoal sketch of black scales, foreboding against the white floor. "Montana."

Anelise bit her lip. It amazed me that she actually seemed concerned about me and my quest. "Montana's kind of big, isn't it?"

"Well..." I hazarded a shrug, forgetting my broken left arm, and then winced afterward when I realized it too late. "We're aiming for Helena. You know, the capital. I'm sure there would be a lot more monster or godly activity around the cities."

Anelise nodded slowly. "I suppose that sounds right. Like New York is practically a monster magnet."

I tentatively returned the grin she flashed at me.

She continued, "I was just thinking that maybe we could get you to Helena somehow, and your friends will come and meet up with you there. How does that sound?"  
But I was already shaking my head vigorously. "They're definitely not the type to leave anyone behind. If my brother doesn't come looking after me first, it will be Zac and Aithne singeing his butt to get back over here."

"Your boyfriend?"

"Yes, and my friend Aithne. She's a daughter of Hestia."

"Ah." A small chuckle escaped Anelise as the punch line of my joke finally sank in. "So that might not work."

"_Will_ not work."

"But just a moment back there you looked like you had something brewing in your head."

I laid down my fork and scratched the side of my head; my wild red hair had been washed and brushed to shiny neatness, I noted absently. "I was wondering if it _would_ be possible to send an IM even without a known location."

Anelise studied me. She could see the icy determination in my eyes. "You think it would work?"

"I was hoping _you_ could tell me."

"Well..." The corner of her mouth twitched. "As long as you've done nothing to Lady Iris, I've no reason to believe she will not oblige you. But there is a problem: your friends will have be near a source of water for a rainbow."

I sighed heavily. "That's only possible if they're still on the cloud."

Chloe chose this time now to pipe up, "Do you think they stopped the cloud and landed? They're your friends, so you would know."

I bit my lip and tried to think. Then I almost smacked myself on the head for my sheer stupidity. "Jasper!" I cried.

"I'm sorry?"

"Jasper, my older brother. He's also Hecate's son. He'll have been able to guide the cloud and keep them afloat. And he's very powerful..." I definitely didn't want to go down that avenue now having to explain about his father being Kronos, and so I promptly shut up.

The crease in Anelise's brow smoothened visibly. "So it should work, then."

I nodded, too tightly wound up to trust my voice again. The tiny movement sent miniature waves of dizziness radiating through me. Again Anelise could not be hoodwinked. Her bright hazel eyes caught my expression, and she ordered, "Enough for now. You have to rest at least one more night; it's the only way to completely heal. You can try summoning them tomorrow."

I~I~I~I~I

"Wow." I had to force myself to release the breath I'd been holding.

"Yup." Anelise grinned, and for a brief moment she seemed seventeen again, nearly just my age, absorbing the surroundings in youthful excitement. She gestured at the magnificent waterfall that somehow she'd been able to hide behind the woods in my back yard. "I try to think of everything. So anywhere Chloe and I go, there's a place where we can IM for help. We like to travel a lot, you see."

A smile flickered across my face. "So I noticed." I squared my shoulders-or rather, shoulder. The sharp pain was gone from my arm, and Anelise had risked peeling off the cast, but there was still a minute hint of a dull throb near the shoulder, and my arm was still hanging in the soft white sling. "Okay, let's do this."

She nodded and pulled out a winking gold drachma from a pocket. The clouds were thinning out in the early morning sky, and presently Apollo's brilliant wakeup rays burst forth into the little clearing across the path of the rocky waterfall and stream. Slowly and surely, the seven-strand rainbow danced into place.

I took the drachma silently from Anelise and prayed silently, _O Iris, please grant my prayer. I need to find my friends. It's all for the best_. I honestly don't know why I added that last sentence, but I did, so I tossed the drachma into the rainbow and watched it slowly sink and disappear among the brilliant hues. "Zac, Jasper, and Aithne, please," I whispered heavily.

At first I thought nothing had happened, that my last hope of communication had flared out and died. But then there was a brief flicker of bright light and sound, like static on a radio frequency. Then in a flash they were all there, my three quest companions, looking shaken and dirty and totally cloud-dizzy.

I wanted to scream for joy.

"IT WORKED!" I yelled, right into Jasper's image. He made a face. I could see that the three of them were all seated comfortably enough on the floating purple cloud, which seemed to have mysteriously expanded to accomodate even their full-length frames. I suspected my brother's magic at work and silently congratulated him.

"Winnie!" Zac sounded near tears. "Where are you? You're hurt! I hope the Fury didn't-"

I gave him a shaky smile. "I'm fine. I fell out of the sky and broke a couple of bones, but a half-blood mother came along and fixed me."

Anelise cleared her throat shyly behind me. "Eighth-blood, remember?"

I had to grin at that.

Aithne was peering impatiently over Zac's shoulder, her wild flaming curls sticking out at even odder ends than I'd ever thought possible. She scowled, and at that moment she looked like she'd been thrust in a toaster and broiled three times. "You gave us a right down scare there!" she scolded me, but her voice trembled violently. Then her crimson eyes slid over to take in Anelise, whose taller frame hovered behind me. "Um...hello," she said, abashed.

Anelise smiled gently like a healing angel (not that she wasn't in the least). "Aithne, I presume?"

Aithne nodded.

Jasper interrupted, "We're flying over Chicago right now. Where are you, Winnie?"

I breathed a silent sigh of relief. "Not far. I _am_ in the state of Michigan. Um, Anelise...?"

Anelise stepped forward and began to rattle off directions to my friends through the IM, and obediently Jasper turned the cloud around and propelled it back toward us. The image began to flicker, so Zac simply said, "We'll be there as soon as we can, Winnie. I promise." Then the connection was cut.

I was practically leaping with joy. I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply, just to remember Zac's face as he made that promise to me, his deep golden eyes shining brightly. A twinge of guilt reminded me of my lie about the scales, but I brushed it aside. That was something personal I was dealing with. There was no need to bring Demi and Nemesis between me and my friends. It was me she wanted, after all. Red lights danced behind my eyelids.

It was then that I heard it.

A woman screaming.

**A/N: *snickers wickedly***

**Strangely enough, I planned out this entire story chapter by chapter, but I just took a wild deviation from my outline back there. Now let's see where this cliffie goes...**

**As always, my usual request goes for reviews! *dangles sumptuous chocolate-iced cake in front of readers***

**~TOIMI**


	6. Chapter 6: Wizards versus Hades

**A/N: Haha, okay, so I've been having uber-sized problems with my Internet connection; I haven't been able to get on this site and update my fanfics regularly. That's why now I also have this uber-sized update on **_**all**_** of my fanfics at once! (I usually follow a monthly cycle, though lately I've been breaking my pattern anyway, so it doesn't matter.)**

**I know I left you all on a terrible cliffhanger back there, and I'm awfully surprised that my head hasn't been chopped off by outraged readers by now. So here's the continuation!**

Chapter 6: Wizards vs. Hades

_The woman's bright silver eyes were wide and flooded with fear. Her wild red hair was a sweaty mass flying in dark streaks against the wind as she leaped and bounded through the impregnable forest. Moonlight streamed down upon her, lighting up her path. She glanced behind her and had to look away quickly again; behind her came the yapping growls of the slobbering, ravenous hellhounds._

_ The woman reached across her back and whipped out three shining, perfectly crafted silver arrows. The string of her bow stretched tight; her form glowed, and with a fierce cry of exertion, she let her weapon fly._

_ As the arrows soared through midair, the woman dropped her bow and flung up a hand, yelling out a phrase in another language. The arrows seemed to slow, but they didn't; instead, they split and whistled past her, each one hitting home between the eyes of each sable hellhound._

_ One by one, they disintegrated with pitiful howls into golden dust. The wind picked up its pace and swept up their remains back to Hades. The woman slumped forward, panting, all her powerful glow and terrible beauty gone. She looked just like any mortal in fatigue. She turned once more and stepped straight into the moonbeam, which solidified beneath her feet into a silver path into the sky. Taking a deep breath, she put out a foot and leaped into the cold night air._

_ She was safe._

_ For now._

I~I~I~I~I

It seemed like passing out and waking up in other people's arms was becoming a habit these days.

I blinked a few times to ward off my disorientation. There was a bright light from the sun being blocked off by something-oh. Someone's head. I realized abruptly that a pair of arms was supporting me as I lay on what seemed to be cool, grassy ground.

"You gave us a terrible scare."

"Zac!" I exclaimed, and tried to sit up, but the sudden movement sent a fresh wave of dizziness through me. I sagged against his chest and began to cry out of sheer relief. "You're here."

"Of course I am," he said, allowing a smile. "Aithne and Jasper too."

When he said this, I became aware of other people surrounding me in the clearing. To one side, Anelise was looking a bit shy but delighted as she watched our reunion; Aithne came bounding forward, wild red curls snapping in the wind, while Jasper loped into view after her.

"You're precious strange," was his monosyllabic comment.

"I'll precious strange you!" I shot back.

Aithne's usually fierce expression had melted into one of fierce concern. Her brows contracted. "What happened to you? We saw you collapsing through the IM just before we cut the connection."

"Um, I don't know," I replied honestly. "It was a dream, I guess."

Aithne couldn't hold back an incredulous snort. "What, you _fell asleep_ on your feet?"

"Hey, it happens!" said Zac.

"Maybe to you, Sunshine," said Aithne dismissively.

I cracked a grin at the two. Then I winced when I felt the trickle of blood down my chin from my split lip. "Okay, maybe not a dream. It was definitely vivid. It must have been a vision."

Jasper smiled crookedly. "So the visions follow you around, eh? The crystal ball isn't enough?"

"I worked with the crystal ball when I didn't know what I was doing half the time," I argued. "I guess it's good that I don't need to tote around something heavy and breakable when I'm on a quest."

"Yes, but that means you'll be collapsing and having seizures all over the place," Aithne pointed out.

I scowled.

Zac winked at me. "Don't worry, I'll be around to catch you."

"Kind of inconvenient if we're fighting off Furies and hellhounds, don't you think?" Aithne quipped.

I had to smile again. Then Anelise caught my eye over Aithne's shoulder. She nodded and smiled back warmly. I moved quickly toward her. "Thank you so much for everything you've done for me-and for my friends," I began. "And I think Chloe will make a fine half-blood."

Anelise laughed. "Well, I'm one-eighth, remember? So that makes her five-eighths." She paused. "How do you know that?"

I shrugged. "I know things. Just in my heart."

"Hecate's blood, eh?"

At that moment, it came to my memory again something I had said long ago-oh, so long ago. I had been marooned on Calypso's island, where she had healed me, and at our parting I'd promised her I knew in my heart we would meet again.

For the first time, something stirred in me-and I wasn't so sure anymore.

"I think we should go now," I whispered.

I~I~I~I~I

"I don't think we can teleport out of here," I announced as we emerged from the copse of trees onto the other side of the mountain where Anelise and Chloe resided.

"You always say that," Aithne grumbled. "Then why the heck did you bring us out here into the open?"

Before I could even open my mouth, Zac came to my rescue. "Winnie's fallen a couple thousand feet from the sky and broken some bones, not to mention cast some serious magic in between. I think she deserves a rest."

I smiled wanly up at Zac and slipped my hand into his. He squeezed it.

"I suppose that leaves me the rest of the work cut out," Jasper said bracingly. "C'mon, let's make another cloud. What was the spell again?"

I pretended to retch behind Aithne's back; Zac grinned. I turned back to Jasper. "I did the binding spell too before, but since you're all very willing to go with me now, and we're not hurtling out of an airplane at a hundred and fifty miles an hour, you can skip that. I think the spell was Please carry me / Wherever we choose / And save these three / From darkness' ruse."

"Hm," mused Jasper. "I think it may have been the phrase 'these three' which did no protect you from the Fury. Here, I'll fix it. And you'd better right it down now."

I rolled my eyes ostentaciously.

Jasper cleared his throat and held out his right hand in front of him in the air. "Hecate bind / Three souls to mine. Please carry me / Wherever we choose / And save them and me / From darkness' ruse."

"You ruined the meter," I grumbled.

Jasper in turn rolled his eyes at me. Presently our cloud materialized out of the air, though this time it was a strange fluffy light blue hue, like his and my eyes. He bowed and gestured us onboard.

As we clambered on, I felt Zac's warm hand press on my arm. I looked back at him, mystified. "What?"

"Something's bothering you," he murmured.

"What?" I said again.

Zac shrugged and gave me a small smile. "I'm not the only one around here with keen senses. I'd say I know you pretty well by now."

I sighed and looked down at my hands. "You're right. I just..."

"Go on," he prompted me.

"Well, when I told Anelise that-that I know things, deep down in my heart, I can't...I can't really be sure anymore. I may have only said that to make her feel better. But..." Suddenly the words came pouring out in a horrendous torrent. "This new body of mine, what if it's all been a trick? My powers-sometimes they're so much, I can't control them. And I'm scared of what I'm capable of. And...and Nemesis' voice was able to break into my mind. That's never happened before, ever! It's always been my mother's voice, and hers only, that I hear. What if-what if I'm becoming a vessel for bad?"

Zac's golden eyes darkened with intensity as he listened, his gaze riveted on me. When I finished, my voice hoarse and cracked, he reached out and took my face in his hands to look at him in the eye. "Winnie, I know you. You've faced far worse before. You battled Kronos inside you. I know that you are not bad. And even if you are going in that direction, I know your will is stronger than the Fates'."

I smiled sarcastically. "You know, there is a reason they're called the _Fates_."

"I don't care."

I looked up quickly at the hardness in his tone.

"You're scared of what you're capable of, Winnie, but whatever it is, you should be proud of it. It is a gift. You're a very powerful demigod, and you can use that to help our side. The _good_ side."

I sighed again, but this time it was from sheer exhaustion and relief. I moved into his arms and buried my face in his chest, where I could hear the steady beat of his heart suddenly skip and leap out of time. I laughed softly. "Your heart's still jumping into your mouth?"

His voice came out oddly strangled. "Always with you."

I looked up at him. "You're the only person in this entire world who can give me that whole crappy you're-the-strong-demigod-who-will-save-the-world speech...and totally get away with it."

He grinned, and his heartbeat even sped up to an impossible gallop under my palms. "I know. That's why I'll always be the one to give the speech." He lowered his voice. "I daresay you'd slug Jasper if he said it, and you'd go all-out magician's battle with Aithne."

I giggled. "You really do know me."

"Well, what did I just say?"

He moved too quickly then for me to respond; all I know is that all of a sudden his mouth was engulfing mine, pressing hard and deep and tasting faintly of blood and cinnamon and honey. When we pulled apart, breathing hard, we were most rudely interrupted by a strident voice.

"Oi, you two!" Aithne was yelling from two feet behind me (talk about personal boundaries). "Look!"

Zac and I quickly scrambled to the side of the cloud to look down-and gasped.

We were hovering over Helena, Montana, and it was under siege by monsters.

I~I~I~I~I

Before anybody could stop me, I had drawn my ringing sword and was leaping off the cloud.

I couldn't help but notice the overly obvious tone of deja vu, but the difference was that this time I hadn't fallen off the cloud; I had thrown myself over. This time I was in for it.

There was a terrific whoosh that blew my tangled flaming hair into my face as Jasper swooped down in a crash landing behind me. With wild yells, Jasper, Aithne, and Zac leaped to the ground, rolled about in turn, and scrambled upright with weapons already clutched in their hands. Jasper had a redoubtable Stygian iron broadsword of his own, and it was pulsing with a blue light just as mine was. As Hecate's children, any weapons in our hands acted as radar detectors for monsters' presence-and presently we were surrounded.

It was a motley assortment of hellhounds, the Furies, two minotaurs, some chimaeras, even some empousae and those snake-thingy-women whose names I don't even deign to recall. It was a huge army all the same.

"What the heck," I said, "is this?"

"This can only mean the presence of a strong half-blood," Jasper shouted over the raging wind and snapping jaws of the monsters advancing on us as slowly as the bad guys in the movies.

I found I was gasping. "Yeah, but an _army_? Aargh!" I screamed a strangled cry and parried just in time the crushing blow of the minotaur's club swinging my way. True to its noble make, my blue sword sliced clean through the bough-though it also took me up with it as the minotaur raised his club hand again. I think I screamed nonstop, not even to breathe.

_Breathe, Winnie!_ I commanded myself. I imagined being rapped on the head smartly and being told to stand at attention. _Remember Percy. What did he say about the minotaur? Right, it can only go in one direction. Your best chance is to get onto its back._

I think I rolled my eyes at this point at the sheer madness of the situation. I'd battled a minotaur before, but that had been in the heat of my rage and the height of my adrenaline levels. I was only beginning to pump out now.

With a savage snarl, I yanked my sword free of the broken club and threw myself in midair, praying-of all things-that the minotaur's back wouldn't be smelly.

I landed on two feet between his horns, skidded, and rolled down hard onto my butt. With overactive reflexes I flung out my hands and grabbed around one horn as he began to buck. I glanced over to my side-and screamed. Again.

Black hair whipping in the wind, Percy grinned back roguishly. "You and I have a fatal attraction to these creatures." He was riding rather calmly on the other horn, hacking decisively with his long sword Riptide, though presently the minotaur was also an overactive fellow and Percy kept missing.

We nodded at each other. "Together."

We both raised our blades and then brought them down with a sharp whistle for the death blow. Unfortunately, what came next wasn't the death blow; it was the butt blow. In a matter of two and a half seconds, we found ourself rolling around ignominiously on the ash-strewn city streets. We struggled upright. My head whipped around at the clatter of a dagger on the pavement.

Her stormy grey eyes were blazing with admirable wrath. Annabeth tossed her bright golden curls over one shoulder-they'd obviously worked themselves free of a ponytail-and casually picked up her dagger from the heap made by the now incinerated minotaur. She wiped it unnecessarily on her shirt. "The way you two were fighting, you were going to slice each other's heads off," she said gruffly. She then turned to Percy and grabbed his hand. "Come on, he's over there."

I never got to ask who "he" was and where "there" would be, because a Fury shrieked and disintegrated to her death on the point of another dagger two inches behind me.

Aithne breathed deeply and quirked a brow at me, smearing the sweaty auburn tangles from her brow. "We dagger people are always saving your butts. Learn to take advantage of a long blade, won't you?"

I grinned crookedly at her. "Thanks."

"No prob. And stay away from the Furies. Those bat-grannies seem to have a grudge against you."

I looked at her. "Ya think?"

With that, we shared one parting glance and raced off in opposite directions to leap about in midair and hack at monsters at a rate of one million per minute. Looking back, I have absolutely no idea how I did it, but I guess I knew now what Zac was talking about. My new body was built for speed and stamina-not to mention new magic spells popping into my head every few seconds.

A flash of brilliant golden light blinded me for a second. Zac had his hands thrust out before him, issuing beam after beam of white-hot sunlight. The hellhounds whimpered and barbecued right where they were, two feet from his nose, and were sifted into the sewer.

Zac and I shared a look. "Wow," I said. "Looks like _those_ pups won't be coming back any time soon. Imagine all the dirt mixed into their systems when they reform."

He grinned. Then he shouted, "Behind you!"

I didn't stop to think. (Wasn't that my specialty?) I dropped into a hard roll that probably saved my life; then I flashed out my blue sword and caught the sneering empousa savagely right in the middle of her outrageous pretty face. With a look of horror, her Maybelline-model face turned into a charred statue and then was washed away in the wind.

I nodded back at Zac. "Thanks."

"Just another example of the kinds of creatures who have a grudge against you."

I rolled my eyes and leaped up to parry blows this time with a chimaera spitting needles at me from its tail.

"Ignis caerula!" I screamed, and enormous blue flames erupted around me in an impregnable shield. The needles bounced off harmlessly. I then held out my hand before me and focused on gripping the chimaera's head. I'd never tried any telekinesis this heavy before, but I didn't exactly have time now to experiment. With a ragged gasp for breath, I shoved the chimaera straight onto Jasper's waiting blade. He'd been standing in the middle of the street, about to run and help me, and the tip of his sword had been held out in the perfect position.

With a last strangled cry, the chimaera fell to pieces.

Jasper grinned. "Good one."

"Just remember, big bro," I called back, "Latin and Greek are the magic languages. Utilize them."

"And since when did you learn Latin and Greek, _little sis_?"

"Gaia!" I laughed, and extinguished another howling Fury in vengeance for clawing at my neck.

I glanced around. Amazingly, the battlefield was now empty. Percy and Annabeth, being the best fighters around, had gotten away with hardly a scratch. The rest of us-Zac, Jasper, Aithne, and I-were the would-be pros and were alternately limping about and nursing sore spots.

I spit on the pile of my latest attacker's ashes. "Take that, bat-granny," I snickered. Then, to my astonishment, my spit turned blue, and as it hit the debris the pile erupted into shrieking icy flames. In a flash it was gone.

My mouth was still hanging open when the others had already gathered around me.

"Your spit turns blue," stated Annabeth.

In shock, my body's most natural response was sarcasm. "Yeah, thanks."

Somebody was coming toward us out of the smoke and detritus; it was a boy. Or rather, it was a tall young man who should have been a teenaged boy, if not for the somber visage he held. He was just as tall as Jasper, which was saying a lot. His hair was a wavy white gold almost blinding in the intensity of its color; his eyes were shining deep blue, with hints of ice and turquoise somewhere down there. Casually he wiped a dark streak of soot from his nose.

He stated the obvious. "I'd say that's about it."

Annabeth looked slightly annoyed. "Yeah, I'd say, what with the _moonbeams_ shooting out of your _eyes_," she said huffily.

Did I say _slightly_ annoyed?

Aithne was squinting up at the newcomer. "So you're the new half-blood."

I turned quickly to Pery and Annabeth. "So this is what you were after, Annabeth. We got your message, and we came here straightaway because we were afraid you were being hunted."

The daughter of Athena looked at me, bemused. "Hunted? I'd say we were doing the hunting. I knew Artemis' weakening had something to do with a child."

"Oh." I swallowed hastily and hoped that nobody thought I was acting strangely. So what had Nemesis' sign been all about?

I knew this was far from over.

"So you're the son of Artemis?" Jasper clarified.

The new guy nodded calmly, running a veined and corded hand through his blond waves. He looked exhausted, but inexplicably satisfied. "I'm Rowan. And actually, I'm not a demigod. My mother is Artemis, and my father is Morpheus."

Zac inhaled sharply.

My gaze snapped up to meet Rowan's. As I stared into his blue irises, I was helplessly sucked into another vision.

**A/N: Muwahahaha. Sorry, I'm a little out of control with my side comments here. Anyway, that was the big surprise out of the bag. I KNOW WHAT YOU'RE THINKING. Artemis is the patron goddess of the moon and virgins, right? Well, stay tuned. She's still a virgin. Promise. She just fell really hard for Morpheus...which has dire political consequences. You'll see in the future. XD Sorry, I'm being mean, but just keep reading as I update. And thanks to bianca-skittles for all her faithful reviews! Please continue giving me feedback!**

**~TOIMI**


	7. Chapter 7: My Ball of Yarn

**A/N: Ohhhhkay, thanks for reading, all you people. I checked back with my stats and found that even though I don't get many reviews lately, a lot of people are still reading and watching my stories-so thanks a million. Now some of my fans, including Bianca-Skittles, raised the concern that the introduction of Rowan will create a love triangle. I can't say exactly that it will be a **_**triangle**_**, per sé, because the plot from here gets really complicated-as you might have already guessed. =) But rest assured, there will be a little bit of that spicyness if you're into Bella-Jake-Edward types (not that I like that story), but ultimately Winnie listens to her heart.**

**So now that that's out of the way, please read on!**

Chapter 7: Where's My Ball of Yarn?

The last thing I recall-as I did so often now, before blackness rolled in-was the morbid noisome pavement rushing up to meet my face. I closed my eyes against the continuous flashes of pain savagely hacking at my head. I remember hearing someone moaning. Then I was rushing through a hallway.

It was as if I had no feet; I was a ghost that was floating at breakneck speed past whitewashed walls and small globe lights, through air pierced by the whistling wind and spinecrawling screams.

Then it all stopped, and I came to an abrupt halt that tipped me halfway off my feet and snapped back my head in a whiplash. The shrieks in my ears were gone; now the air was quivering with a silence of enormous intensity. Waves of heat and cold wafted up from the floor past me. I realized then with a glance that I was standing in a small octagonal room, as far as I could make out, and I was barefoot on icy stone tiles with barely a stitch covering me. Draped about me was a mere white bedsheet, hardly even resembling a chiton or toga. I looked up again, and saw my reflection in all different sizes and perspectives, a million times over, all around me.

I was in a hall of mirrors.

My face was surreal in its beauty. I knew my new face and body were much more attractive, having been crafted by Gaia herself, but my reflection falsely portrayed a statue of Aphrodite. My flaming hair was a rich auburn; my gigantic ice blue eyes seemed steely and warm at the same time, large and rimmed by dark lashes...and so _vulnerable_. I raised my hand to trace the delicate Cupid's bow of my lips. My reflection did the same; but this time it smiled-a smile that turned mad and cruel. A spark of insanity flew into her eyes, and an invisible wind blew and raged around her, whipping her hair back.

Then her face began to change.

At first I thought my vision was blurring. Her features melted and shifted like molten metal, twisting and arranging themselves in a hellish design. Her large aquiline nose became pert, her lips full and flirtatious; her red hair darkened to a deep chocolate and her eyes shrank to an inviting yet menacing Pacific blue framed by black eyelashes and proud, dark, arched eyebrows. Demi Cochemagne, my arch nemesis.

Just as quickly, her face morphed into a tall, proud beauty of olive skin and raven black waves and piercing emerald green eyes. She held a scale balanced in her palm, and in the other hand she clutched a dagger.

I reflexively looked down at myself. I was still wearing the stupid bedsheet toga, not the black robes reflected in the mirror, but sure enough in my left hand I held a dagger. The blade slipped down and sliced my palm, and the blood oozed down between my fingers and turned black before the drops hit the floor.

I screamed.

I~I~I~I~I

Strangely cool, dry hands were wrapped around my arm, dragging me upright onto my knees from where I lay groveling to the air on the pavement. I groaned a low sound and cracked open my eyes.

"I think I'll take it from here, thank you very much," came Zac's voice, his tone uncharacteristically sharp.

The person who had caught me from smashing my nose on the road quickly stepped back. If I had blinked, I would have missed the movement.

I opened my eyes fully, and Zac's face morphed comically from defiance to worry. His eyebrows shoved together. "Are you all right? Was it one of those visions again?"

I rubbed my temple absently where it still throbbed, but thank the gods, the pain was quickly ebbing. I would have a veritable ache for the next few hours or so, but I'd certainly dealt with worse-not to mention hellhounds and possessive spirits. "I'm okay." I glanced up at the rest of the party-Percy and Annabeth were looking confused, naturally, since they'd known nothing till this point about my seizures. "It's nothing important."

"Everything you see is important," cut in Jasper, kneeling beside me opposite Zac.

I looked up questioningly. "How'd you get over here so fast to catch me? Learned to turn into smoke now?"

Though my voice was slightly teasing, Jasper was overly somber as he shook his head. "You were standing right in front of Rowan. He caught you. The kid moves fast, I have to say."

I gazed over his shoulder toward the group again; Rowan had tried to hide himself behind the others, though presently he was unsuccessful because of his sheer height and...er...glow. I noticed cursorily that his light blue eyes had shifted subtly to a shining silver.

Aithne was studying him closely as if he were a lab specimen. Well, I suppose, by mortal standards he could be classified as one-though I highly doubted they would be able to capture an Olympian and shrink him into a petri dish.

I also noted then that my collapse had caused a major distraction from the real point at hand. _Rowan was a god_. How was that even possible? Here he was, standing and looking curious just as any normal teenager would-though of course, he could hardly be seen as a regular teen, even from this distance. His pale skin gave off a ghostly glow that would tick off even the dumbest-witted mortal's radar.

Jasper and Zac had followed my gaze and were likewise looking at Rowan-just looking. I met Percy's and Annabeth's eyes, and the two of them nodded almost imperceptibly.

"I think we should send Chiron an IM to let him know who's coming," I spoke.

I~I~I~I~I

Taking into account all of our recent injuries as well as my last couple of bouts of passing out, we unanimously agreed to take the safest and most boring route back to camp via airplane. Jasper-with my covert assistance, of course-charmed a young eyelash-batting flight attendant easily and got us onboard.

"No more jumping out of windows and crashing in the middle of Michigan, I hope," Zac whispered coyly.

I looked up at him with a sparkle in my eye as we made our way down the aisle toward our last-minute-assigned seats in economy class.

"If I go insane again, you'll be the very first to know," I whispered back.

We sank into the cushioned chairs, and Zac squeezed my hand and pressed his lips to the top of my head. I had to stop the smirk rising to my face.

"What?" he demanded.

"My hair is a mess."

"So?"

I turned to grin breathlessly. "Look at us. Dirty, sweaty, oily, bloody, muddy, ashy, not to mention trembly. How in Eros' eggs were we even able to squeal past that checkpoint?"

"Eros' eggs?" Zac repeated.

"What? Believe it or not, he loves scrambled eggs almost as much as he loves girls."

Zac raised a brow.

"I have my sources," I said cryptically.

"Gee, I wonder what shampoo he uses," Zac muttered.

I laughed.

Zac turned suddenly sober, his face darkening like a cloud passing over the sun. "We've found a god."

"Yeah. A teenage god who shoots laser beams from his eyes and annoys the Hades out of me."

"Really? And I thought Hades was pretty bad. What did Rowan ever do to you?"

I shrugged. "Well, he ticked _you_ off."

Zac grimaced. "Was it that obvious?"

"I'm not the only one around here with keen senses," I teased. "And as I was saying, if he ticked you off, then it follows that he ticks me off. It's called solidarity."

Zac rolled his eyes. "You're not the only one who reads the dictionary, Winnie."

I chuckled and leaned up to peck him on the cheek. He sighed and folded his hand around mine which rested on his neck, and kissed my fingertips one by one, making me laugh softly again at the tickle. "I don't know what I'd do without you, Winnie."

It was my turn to sigh. "Sappiness alert, Sunshine."

"Winnie, I'm serious."

I turned back to him at the sincerity of his tone. After a short pause, I said, a little strangled, "I know. Me neither." I smiled at him. "Remember when you came crashing into my fortune-telling stall?"

He grinned back wryly. "Yeah, and your fake Gypsy accent was horrendous."

"No, it wasn't."

"Well, even if you sounded like a Gypsy," he amended, "I doubt you could have fooled anyone. Gypsies don't have red hair."

"Yes, they do!"

"No, they don't. Esmeralda was black-haired."

"You're not the only one who reads," I teased him. "Esmeralda wasn't the only Gypsy in that story. Quasimodo was of Gypsy blood. He had shockingly red hair."

"Not to mention one eye and five teeth," muttered Zac.

"Oh, come off it." I squeezed his hand and whispered in his ear, "I love you."

"I know." He ran his free hand through my hopeless tangle of Titian waves. "I love you too."

I~I~I~I~I

I leaned heavily on Zac's arm as he supported me up Half-Blood Hill, where we were greeted by the glory of the rising sun in our eyes. I squinted through the brilliance and could faintly discern the outline of a centaur galloping our way, quiver and bow slung over one shoulder, with his long hair streaming out behind him.

"Welcome back," Chiron's voice boomed. At the moment, in my pure relief and exhaustion, he sounded exactly like an old father welcoming home his own children-and I had no doubt that that was how he felt at that moment as well.

"I had not expected you to make it back to camp so swiftly," Chiron continued. "Well done. Aithne and Zac, you may return to your cabins. Percy and Annabeth, if I may bother you a while longer, we must speak privately in the Big House. After that, you may both rest; you have come a long way. Wynter, Rowan, please wait outside. I must have a word with each of you as well."

Obediently we dispersed as ordered; Zac and I shared a swift kiss before he loped off for the Apollo cabin, hands in pockets and muddy golden hair ruffling in the breeze.

I glanced askance at Rowan, who was poised with seeming uninterest just outside the slatted door of the parlor in the Big House. With a weary sigh, I thumped my head against the worn blue wall and pressed my ear to it, trying to get a wind of what the three inside were saying. I could recognize Percy's deep voice and Annabeth's concerned, impatient tone, but no words were discernible.

For want of something to do, I absently played with the pendant round my neck-a thick wooden ring divided into four with nature symbols on it, from Gaia. It was the magic token that had proved instrumental in resurrecting me and giving me a new body not six months ago.

"What is that?"

I jumped and banged my head against the door lintel at Rowan's low voice. I had nearly forgotten he was standing next to me. "What's what?"

"That pendant," he said.

"Oh." I glanced down at it. "A gift. From a goddess who...was kind to me." I swallowed. If not for Gaia's help, I might have either lived to the end of the my days with Kronos controlling me, or else died and paid my dues in Tartarus.

Rowan raised a brow. "Big shot on Olympus?"

"Not exactly." I swallowed again; to force myself to stop fiddling with the necklace, I quickly stowed my hands behind my back and locked my fingers together. "Actually, I was more like an enemy back then. But, I mean, not really me. It was kind of a different me...Persephone's pomegranates, it's complicated."

Rowan pursed his lips. "It sounds like it." He sighed and shifted, shoving his own hands into his back pockets. "From the looks of it, they're talking about me in there."

"Yeah." I slanted my gaze up sharply at him then. "Can I ask you something?"

He spread his arms. "Your turn."

"Well, I don't mean to...offend you or anything. But Annabeth started off with Percy on her, um, mission to find out what was going on with Lady Artemis when the moon started waning. That was, like, a month ago. And...you know, you look like you're seventeen or something."

"Ah." Rowan smiled easily. "Well, I wasn't exactly born human, you could say."

I narrowed my eyes. "What?"

"See, you know how Lady Athena was born, right?"

"Out of Mr. Lightning Bolt's head," I muttered. The sky rumbled. "Okay, I'm sorry, Zeus!" I yelled.

Rowan chuckled. "It gets me wondering how a goddess would come to give you a gift."

I glared at him. "Just answer my question. Please."

"All right. So anyway, I was kind of born out of my mother's spirit. My father is Morpheus, god of dreams."

"Yeah. I know."

"So that kind of means I can shapeshift." At my raised brows, he hurried on. "I don't have any age, really. But my mother wanted me to look normal enough to blend in, so she and my father enabled me to grow over three days' time into...well, this."

I chewed my lip. "You can shapeshift, huh?"

"Well, yeah." He shrugged modestly. "That would probably be my father's side. You know, the idea of dreamland being an alternate universe where you can take on any shape or personality. I suppose what I do is bring that alternate world to earth. Here. Why are you so interested?"

"Oh, nothing." I turned away quickly. I had just remembered my horrendous vision, the one that had led to my collapse in Rowan's arms the day before. I had been standing before a mirror, my face and body changing uncontrollably. Could it possibly be a sign that I had similar powers to come?

"When you fell, back in Helena," Rowan began slowly, "I heard your brother saying that you see things."

"Oh. Yeah. That." I cleared my throat uncomfortably and fidgeted. "Yeah, I sort of have...visions. Of the future." At his bemused look, I added, "I'm a daughter of Hecate."

"Ah." Rowan gave me a small smile. "Then that would explain the telekinesis and blue spittle."

"Um. Yeah. Exactly." I jerked upright as the door creaked open. Percy and Annabeth shuffled out, looking dead beat, and simply nodded to me as they passed. Soon they were swallowed up by the other side of the hill, where they went presumably to their cabins to crash.

Chiron glanced at me with concern. "Forgive me for disturbing you. This will be only a minute." He beckoned me inside, gesturing for Rowan to remain waiting. He shut the door softly and wheeled himself over to the fire-he had collapsed back into his wheelchair form for convenience in the small room. He waited for me to plop down into the threadbare armchair before he spoke.

"If I recall correctly, part of the reason that I called you and your friends to camp was that I also received a written message," he said.

I nodded wearily. "Yes, the riddle. I figured it out, Chiron. I did some magic on it, and the message revealed itself to be from my mother, Hecate. It was a warning."

Chiron looked quizzical-a rare Kodak moment. "A warning? Of what?"

I dug into my voluminous pockets and finally produced the parchment. "The first part has already been fulfilled. It said we were to seek for the lost in places forged of Fate, half a silver ray away, et cetera. That would be Rowan. I understand now; he's the son of Artemis, so that's why there's the 'silver ray' business. But..." I paused.

Chiron gently leaned forward from his wheelchair and plucked the paper from me. "Ariadne's fate you face / Dare cheat the game you chose," he read softly. "Each bargain has its price. / Seek too much, and beware." The old centaur looked up at me with soft grey eyes. "I think your mother knows exactly what will happen in your future, Wynter. And it is not a happy one."

I was tempted to roll my eyes and say something asinine like, "Geez, thanks, horse-man. Now that I know I'm gonna die, can I go crash?" But I'd learned a considerable lesson that sarcasm didn't go very far by way of cheating the Fates, so I simply bowed my head and said nothing. Then I murmured, "Who was Ariadne?"

Chiron sighed. "Ariadne," he said, "was the love of Theseus, the young man who defeated King Minos' labyrinth and killed the Minotaur."

"Like Percy," I whispered.

"Yes. Ariadne was the king's daughter. She helped Theseus by telling him how to figure out the maze's mind. After Theseus' victory, he agreed to take her back home with him, away from Crete. They had to stop on an island on the voyage home. Little known to them, it was enchanted; in exchange for the entire crew's freedom to finish the journey home, one person had to stay behind. Ariadne sacrificed herself, wishing only for Theseus to make it back home alive. She was forced to stay on that island until she died."

My eyes tightened. "I remember that story now," I whispered. "It wasn't a happy one. Theseus forgot to raise the white sail, and his father jumped off a cliff. That's why it's called the Aegean Sea."

Chiron merely nodded.

"But why couldn't one of the crew stay behind?" I suddenly said, quite loudly. "Why Ariadne? Didn't she know she would break Theseus' heart?"

Chiron gazed at me for a long, heavy moment. "True love," he said, "and sacrifice...are the most powerful tools that could ever settle a bargain. Because of the magic of her choice, the island no longer disturbed future seafarers. She held its power in her hands."

"But she lost Theseus," I said.

"Perhaps, perhaps not," said Chiron. "The legend always lets you assume that she died alone on the island, but no written record will actually tell you that."

I stared at him.

"Come now, child, off to bed with you," said the centaur. "Please know that I am terribly sorry for the burden that your mother's letter has placed in your heart. I would tell you what the Fates plan for you, if only it were for me to know. But also know that it is not for me to make your choices. There is hope, Wynter. There is always hope. Even if you battle Nemesis herself."

I stood and swallowed, looking down at Chiron. "Yeah, I haven't forgotten. Demi's still out there."

"Demi Cochemagne or the goddess Nemesis, whatever you wish to call her," said Chiron. "Nemesis is the goddess of justice, even more than revenge. If she has entered into a pact with Hades to help Demi, then there is a debt withstanding. Nemesis is a powerful goddess, Olympian or not. If this is indeed a game you are playing, Wynter, then you already know how high the stakes and how dangerous the rules can be. It is not over."

"No," I said bracingly. "It's not over."

**A/N: Whoa, okay, heavy tone here now. Sorry; I was listening to Lord of the Rings soundtracks when I wrote this chapter, and I have to warn you that music has a direct effect on my mood of writing. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it, and I'm giving out free chocolate chip brownies to whoever reviews!**

**Cheers,**

**~Katrina Mae**


	8. Chapter 8: A Car Hits King Arthur

**A/N: Well, since I'm at the library anyway, I might as well post another chapter in the same update. I was listening to Leona Lewis's "Something More" album while writing this, so pardon me if it's a bit more emotional than my past installments. Also, please pardon the spectacularly inappropriate title. (I say inappropriate because...well, you'll see the tone is getting serious.)**

**Please read on!**

Chapter 8: A Car Hits King Arthur

"Mm..."

I groaned and shuffled my feet together, where they lay ignominiously exposed from under the rumpled blanket, receiving the brunt of the November wind from the open window. Something warm was on top of me...I could make out hands on either side of my face...

My eyes flew open.

Zac pulled away, smiling gently, having just kissed Sleeping Beauty awake. Or Sleeping Frazzlehead, take your pick.

"Hey," he said.

Without another word, I grabbed him by the front of his shirt and mashed my mouth against his. He chuckled against my lips and softened the kiss, twining his arms round my waist to pull me halfway upright on the bed. He smelled of fresh honey again, as he always did when he'd showered-and he smelled of cinnamon and sunlight, if sunlight could ever have a smell so heavenly.

We pulled away from each other at long last, forced by the need to breathe. I gasped a little and felt the color flooding my cheeks. "What was that for?"

"A little wake-up call," Zac murmured rawly. "And what was that for?"

"I..." I ran a hand through my hair, which I found to my shock was squeaky clean and detangled (and evidently mud- and hellhound-free). "I just can't...believe. That you're here. Right now. That we're here together." I looked up at him anxiously, hoping he would understand me even in my most incoherent state.

"I know," he whispered. "I can't believe it either."

It was one of those rare moments when neither of us mentioned or even gave thought to the greater problem looming over us-that Demi, hosting the spirit of Nemesis, was still at large.

"Does Chiron know you're here?" I asked.

Zac grinned. "I don't exactly report to anyone anymore, do I? I'm currently the oldest in the Apollo cabin. Besides, what could he do if he knew?"

"I don't know." I glanced about at the sparse furnishings of my side of the Hecate cabin-most of my stuff was back home. "Maybe neigh and swish his tail and trample us to pieces."

"Well, it's six o'clock in the morning," Zac whispered in my ear, "and Chiron's a very old centaur."

With two fingers he touched my jaw and turned my face toward his. We were both now sitting on the edge of my bed, with the quilt still wrapped haphazardly around me. His long lashes fluttered over his liquid gold eyes; I closed mine as well, and our lips found each other again.

It was probably a few more minutes before we resurfaced. I glanced down at myself half bashfully; somehow I was in a clean set of silky pajamas and a light blue bathrobe. "What the heck?" I yelped.

Zac chuckled and smoothed my hair. "Your brother's not too bad at carrying little sisters to their cabins and getting them all washed up for bed."

Oh. Now that my mind was slowly emerging from the fog, I could remember shuffling out of the Big House and falling down the other side of the hill. I must have fallen into a dead slumber; Jasper had come looking for me and carried me back.

"Wait," I said. "You said it's six o'clock in the morning. We came back at dawn. How long have I been conked out? And where's Jasper?"

"You've been asleep for nearly two days," said Zac gently. "And he's in the arena practicing."

"Like he even needs to," I muttered. "By the tarnation of Tartarus, he's a god too. His dad's Kronos."

"Well, nobody but us knows that. He's going as your brother. You know, Hecate cabin."

"Yeah, I know."

"I guess it's time for the flame-haired princess to get up now, don't you think?" prompted Zac. "Aithne and the others have been waiting for you to wake up. I just didn't let anyone come in here and disturb you."

"Except yourself," I smirked. "Well, it seems like Jasper does know how to clean up a girl. Now get out. I have to change." I gave him another soft kiss-which seemed to leave him half dazed-and pushed him toward the door.

Once he was out, I faced the single mirror on the wall at the end of the cabin. I touched a finger to my swollen lips and couldn't stop the smile rising there. Zac still loved me and was in love with me, after all this time. He was the one person who would never leave me behind or screw up my life.

I wondered if he was just outside the door, listening to me hum to myself.

"I'm in love with you too, Zac," I whispered in the mirror. "Madly."

I~I~I~I~I

The others were uncharacteristically ecstatic to see me-they literally erupted into cheers and applause when my bushy red head made its first appearance in the pavilion at breakfast. You would think I'd been in a coma for twelve years or something.

Jasper clapped me on the back and helped me rather unnecessarily to my bench at the Hecate table, which consisted of merely us two. "I guess you've recharged your blue fire energy, huh?"

I grinned and punched his arm, then dug into my food-it felt as if I hadn't had a hot breakfast of sausages and pancakes in a billion lifetimes.

"Brushed up on your sword skills yet?" Aithne yelled from the Hestia table.

"Should I take that as a challenge?" I called back.

She grinned and gave me a thumbs-up. "Just kidding. But really, I won't always be around to save your butt."

"Oh, yeah?"

Percy and Annabeth dropped by the table personally on their way to the sacrificial fire to say hello and congratulate us for finding them in Montana.

"It was the signs you left behind. They were brilliant," I told Annabeth modestly.

She actually flushed and moved off quickly, towing Percy behind. Percy winked at me-which I took to mean that we would be back to sparring in the arena after breakfast. He'd been my first instructor in the art of swordsmanship, and I hadn't truly beaten him yet. He remained the master in camp.

"I guess we'll be leaving this afternoon," spoke Jasper.

I looked at him. "Oh, yeah, I almost forgot. Dad'll be worried nuts." I sighed. "It just seems so much like home here."

"Because of half-bloods like us, or because of Zac?" my brother asked slyly.

I punched him again.

A few minutes later, I had no more excuses to stay comfortably eating breakfast. Plates were cleared away and the other kids dispersed to their various activities; after a moment's hesitation, I nodded a see-you-later to Jasper and headed down the hill toward the arena.

I had my sword already buckled around my hips. Last night had been the first night in months that I'd slept without it at my side; even at home with Dad, surrounded by mortals, I lay in bed with at least one trusty weapon strapped to my waist.

I drew my sword now and admired it-hardly a session went by when I didn't noticed a new detail in the intricately crafted hilt of my blade, so beautiful and lifelike in its design. The pommel was a crystal ball, perfectly spherical, bursting into flames that were molded into the metal design. One slender line of embossed leaves traced its curved path up the length of the double-edged blade. Now it had some faint traces of dark dried blood; I polished it with the hem of my orange camp shirt, not caring about laundry and stains, and went back to admiring the now shimmering blade.

"Is that from your mother?"

I jumped, nearly dropping my sword. I retrieved it a second after it left my fingers and attempted to spin it to cover up my klutziness.

Rowan had been standing just a few feet behind me, watching me in my most unguarded moments-for how long, I could only tell.

"Um, yeah." Jerkily I pushed back my hair and swallowed. "What are you doing here?"

I suppose my tone must have come out overly hostile, because Rowan shot me a quizzical look. "I'm practicing as well," he said.

"Target practice is over the next hill."

"I know. I just came from there. I need to pick out a sword now."

"Oh," was my stupid answer. I turned about in a circle like a buffoon, before finally managing to point out the shadowed door on the far side of the arena. "The armory is through there."

He nodded once and ducked under the doorway. A few minutes later, I was spinning my sword with expert twists of my wrist and slashing at the robotic dummy's chest when he reappeared.

I did my best to ignore him-I always hated people watching me practice weapons or magic-and grunted heavily when the robot lashed out at me with its shield arm. It missed my chest but instead clipped me by the chin, sending me in a wild somersault about five feet off the ground.

"Terra cresce!" I yelled. The space between me and the ground drastically expanded, giving me enough time to snap my knees in and spread my arms like wings before rolling through the dry sand and landing in a hunter's crouch.

As the robot came bearing down on me, I remembered suddenly what I had done back in Helena. Tentatively I spat at the dummy's chest; the liquid turned a violent cobalt blue before landing on the burlap covering, where it sizzled and burned a large hole, revealing the metal frames and gears working inside.

I raised my sword above my head, leaving myself exposed for the fraction of a second. It was as good a window as any for the machine-its right arm darted forward, prepared to skewer me with its sword. "Ignis caerula!" I cried. I felt the satisfying rumble of the ground a nanosecond before it erupted into shrieking blue flames, shielding me from the tip of the blade that would have pierced my guts a moment before.

I completed my move then and let my sword come crashing down on the dummy's head, slicing it straight through in half. The force of the blow lifted me a few inches off the sand like a seesaw. Panting and sweating heavily, I let myself collapse backward, then rolled into my crouch once more.

"Veni aqua," I said tiredly, and a flick of lavender water extinguished the raging blue flames. I took one look at the dummy and ascertained that it was dead. Or rather, it was no longer functional, and the Hephaestus kids would be somewhat pissed again.

I happened to glance up and saw, to my deep chagrin, that Rowan had been standing for the last seven minutes, arms laden with practice swords, watching silently as I battled that Level 5 dummy.

I looked away quickly again. "Rhea's rashes, the stupid thing cut me again," I seethed, and scrubbed ineffectively at the long, shallow laceration up the underside of my left arm.

Rowan came swiftly to my side. "Can I see it?"

Reflexively I jerked my arm away from his touch, which tingled. I stood up in a rush that made me dizzy. "No, thanks, I'll just go see Zac."

"All right, then." Rowan glanced down at the swords he'd picked out, apparently having forgotten why they were there. He bent down and began to test them in his hand while I continued to swear under my breath and polish my sword.

"Your magic," he spoke. "It's quite impressive."

His tone was so soft and musing, and very matter-of-fact, that I hardly knew if he was complimenting me or talking to himself-both of which options were equally embarrassing.

"Erm," I said. "Thanks." I managed a tiny smile. "I'm technically not supposed to be using magic when practicing with swords. So if you don't mind..."

"I won't mention it," he agreed easily enough. "It does give you a great advantage, though. Make full use of it when you can." He smiled.

"Um..." I looked down at his pile of swords. "So have you picked out one yet?"

Rowan shook his head. He ran a hand through his messy white-blond hair, a habit that I had noticed by now, just like the way Aithne rolled her eyes reflexively or Zac's eyebrows merged or I worried my bottom lip to a pulp. "They're all a bit light."

"Well, of course they would be," I muttered.

"I'm sorry?"

"Nothing." Geez, what was with the formality of speech? I turned to look at him. "What if you try this one?" I handed him my own sword, hilt first.

Blank shock registered on his face. "Oh, I couldn't. That's yours. I should one of my own-"

"Just take it," I snapped impatiently.

"Okay..." He took it, fingers folding around the hilt, where our skin touched. I yanked my hand back and struggled not to glare at him-not that it had been his fault, of course. Rowan apparently noticed nothing-or else he ignored the movement-and swung the sword around in a rough circle a few times. It was obvious he'd never fought with a sword before (not like he even _needed_ one, that is), but he was a natural.

Rowan raised a brow. "Well, hey, this one seems better. Much heavier." He looked at me questioningly. "If you carry a sword of this weight, you must be strong."

I waved a hand impatiently at him and gestured for him to return the blade. "Here, give me that."

Quizzically, he handed it back to me.

Quickly I wedged it between my knees, closed my eyes, and pressed both thumbs to either side of the blade. I could already feel waves of energy radiating from it-not metal energy, as a child of Hephaestus would easily detect, but rather magic energy. It came in the form of blue flames, the shape that my power always took-and the shape in which my mother's power appeared to me. I whispered: "This noble blade between my hands / Shall form again from nobler sands. / Release my power of blue fire / To let this sword, another sire."

I heard a shimmering kind of noise to my left. Rowan gasped. My eyes flew open.

He was holding in his hand a matching sword, but crafted of shining celestial bronze. The helt scintillated with opal, a huge milky white stone reflecting rainbows as it formed the spherical symbol of the moon, partially concealed by intricately molded clouds. Two wavy lines of vines snaked up the blade on either side.

Rowan raised the blade slowly, reverently, and traced the keen metal with a thumb. "It's beautiful," he breathed.

I stood and brushed the sand off my knees. I felt strangely light-headed, as if I had released half of my magic energy that day already. I struggled to stay upright. "Well, then," I said softly. "There's your sword. Good luck."

He turned to say something, but I was already gone.

I~I~I~I~I

"Hey, Ms. Blue Fire."

I turned, a smile already rising to my lips, to meet Zac's embrace. We tousled on our feet a few seconds before settling for light punches on the arm. Then we moved out of the breeze into the coffee shop, which smelled sublimely of frosting and donuts and hazelnut latte.

I pulled Zac into the seat opposite mine in the booth I'd already chosen, and pushed his favorite hot chocolate in front of him. "How was your ride home? Mom okay?"

Zac rolled his eyes and took a deep swig before answering. "Perfectly mom-like. Shrieking with joy and scolding me for running off on quests at Chiron's bidding."

I giggled and sipped at my own drink. "It's not exactly like we have a choice, Sunshine."

"_Exactly_ what I told her," complained Zac. "And you know what she said? She said I should be driving around the world in a golden chariot if I think I want to be exactly like my dad."

We took one look at each other and then burst out laughing. As we gradually calmed down, we would look at each other again and then lose control once more, until repeated glares from the counter checked our mirth.

"So, your turn," said Zac through a full mouth of chocolate. I winced as I remembered Rowan saying the same words. "How was Dad?"

It was my turn to roll my eyes. "Horrendously unconcerned."

Zac's jaw dropped. "Seriously?"

"Seriously. _He_ said that he knew as long as I was with Jasper, I would be safe. Then I told him about the part where I fell from the sky-stop choking, Sunshine-and he went all ballistic, saying I could have been picked up by a gang of murderers and whatnot on the ground."

"As if that's something you can't handle," Zac smirked.

I arched a brow. "Magic flames and celestial bronze don't affect the stupid mortal villains," I reminded him.

"How about kung fu?"

"Oh, stop it. You're getting nonsensical again," I laughed. "I _dance_. I don't do kung fu or tae kwondo or karate."

"Hm. That could use some fixing."

"Hey." Zac turned quickly to my face at the sudden solemnity in my voice. I folded a hand over his on the tabletop. "Let's not talk about fighting anymore. We're here, on a regular mortal date, to enjoy each other. No more chimaeras or Furies or hellhounds."

Zac smiled gently. "Of course. You're right."

We both moved at the same time and shared a kiss over the narrow table. We would have gone on blissfully for eternity, had not a cranky grandmother in the next booth cleared her throat ostentaciously. Zac and I broke apart, flushed and disheveled.

"Maybe we should take this somewhere a little more private," whispered Zac with a sly smile.

I returned his grin. We both got up, our drinks have been paid for already, and headed for the door, where the last of November greeted us with a crisp wind.

The dead leaves crunched and scattered beneath our shoes. I was wearing a large lavender tam over my red hair-which was actually braided neatly, for once-with a matching outfit of sweater dress, tights, and boots in amethyst and black. Zac looked perfectly at ease in a thin flannel shirt over his tee, even in the freezing air.

"Apollo's body heat at work, eh?" I teased.

Zac smiled. "Purple suits you," he said, squeezing my hand.

At that moment, my phone chirped with its hideously annoying Brady Bunch theme ringtone. "Gotta change that or kill the phone," I muttered, much to Zac's amusement. "Dad?" I answered.

The dial tone bleeped in my ear.

"What in Hades' helm?" I said, staring at the phone. Then I clicked it off.

"Changed his mind, I guess," said Zac.

I rolled my eyes. "Yeah, he found the laundry bag under the sink, probably. Come on, let's go."

The light at the end of the pedestrian walk was now a cheery green, and grabbing each other's hands, we jogged through the frozen traffic.

A screech filled my ears-it sounded like fire and rubber on asphalt. I had only half a second to turn and look as the shiny black car came crashing out of nowhere, bearing down on us. In a moment of cruel deja vu, I remembered the robotic dummy-but this time, we were going to be smashed.

Everything went slow-mo then like a movie. I heard Zac's voice as if from the end of a tunnel. "Winnie! Move!"

His body crashed into mine, bone against bone, shoving me flat against the pavement. I flew two feet from him in midair. I was too shocked to react. I saw the curb coming toward me, suddenly fast, and I closed my eyes.

The car roared. I caught a glimpse of blue eyes behind the wheel, shocking sapphire eyes narrowed with hatred. I saw the impact of the car as it bulldozed into his side, sending him in a death blow to the ground. Zac's dark golden hair was flying. There was a strangled cry. His eyes met mine.

"_Winnie_!"

There was blood everywhere. Then I was out.

**A/N: Big shocker, peoples? Sorry. Especially about the cliffie. I hope I don't lose any reader because of this development. But as you can definitely tell, it was Demi/Nemesis-possessing-Demi driving that car. And things have just begun to get interesting.**

**I guess I sound kind of callous. But don't worry, this story has a happy ending.**

**Please review!**

**~TOIMI**


	9. Chapter 9: I Get an F in Life

**A/N: ...Brace yourselves...**

Chapter 9: I Get an F on My Favorite Subject

I was back in the hall of mirrors.

I was no longer facing my own reflection, but Demi's-and something was strange about it. I realized then that her sapphire eyes were now a bright serpent green, keen and calculating as they gazed out at me from under strong black eyebrows.

"Why are you doing this?" I whispered.

Demi's image smiled. "Oh, Demi is not responsible, Wynter. She simply serves as a vessel for me."

"Nemesis?" I said.

"Of course. You must understand, the balance of lives has been upset. You just as well as killed Kronos five months ago in your little stunt with Gaia. You were meant to die with him, to return the balance to things. One death from the Titan side, one death from the Olympians."

"But Gaia helped me," I said defiantly. "She knew what she was doing. And she helped me."

"A sad mistake on her part," mused Nemesis. Her image had now fully morphed into her, taller with olive skin and long raven hair and a proudly beautiful face. "Even goddesses make mistakes, Wynter. Gaia has a...maternal streak, shall I say? She wishes to save all children of the gods, no matter what side they are on, and no matter what the Fates say should happen to them."

"And which side are you on, Nemesis?"

The goddess eyed me pensively. "No side. As I said, I only work to restore the balance of things."

My rage boiled over again. "Then why Zac?" I shouted. "Why not another half-blood? Why not Rowan?"

There was a small, shivering silence in which my last words hung suspended in the air. Nemesis was watching me, brooding. Then she began to chuckle.

Did I mention that I hate it when the villains chuckle? (Or in-between-sides-villain. It was all the same to me.)

"But, my dear, don't you see?" she cooed. "It must be Ariadne to pay the debt. It must be a person who _counts_. The new god Rowan means nothing at all to you-at least for now."

"What do you mean?" I cried. "Why are you doing this to me?"

"Foolish girl!" Nemesis snapped. "Have you not been listening? I am not doing this to you or to anyone. I serve the purpose of a balanced universe."

"Where is he?" I screamed. "Where is he, Nemesis? _Where is he_?"

I got no answer, but rather the terrible sonorous sound of her laughter bouncing off the mirrors in the octagonal room. I screamed a horrible bestial sound and raised the dagger that had been in my left hand, and smashed straight through the mirror.

I was still screaming when I woke up.

I~I~I~I~I

"Ms. Popplewell! Ms. Popplewell, you must calm down! Please!"

My scream was cut short as the haze cleared and an unfamiliar, generic face filled my vision. It was a frazzled-looking woman, her dishwater blonde hair falling to pieces over her eyes as she patted my moist cheek and checked my vitals.

I realized then with a jolt that the echoing in my ears had been replaced by the beeping of a monitor hooked up to me. I glanced about at the unfamiliar surroundings of the teal room. I was lying in a cot of sorts, with my sheets hopelessly tangled about my legs.

"Where am I?" I muttered fuzzily.

"You're in the hospital," said the nurse gently enough. "I'm Pamela. You can call me Pam." She was moving briskly about the room, clearing away mess I couldn't see and freshening up the atmosphere. She turned back to me. "That was quite a bump you got on your head, Ms. Popplewell. If your boyfriend hadn't pushed you out of the way, you would have been dead."

Boyfriend. Zac. My memory came flooding back in a painful rush. "Zac," I whispered. "Where is he?"

Pam looked at me critically as the beep on the monitor visibly sped up. I struggled to keep my heart rate down. But all that blood...Nemesis' words...he couldn't possibly be alive.

She hesitated a long moment before replying. "With all due respect, Ms. Popplewell, I am not allowed to divulge other patient information."

"But I need to know!" I cried. My pulse monitor steepled sharply. "He was there, I saw the car hit him! Where. Is. He?"

Pam tucked her hair back. She sighed. "He is in the Critical Care Unit. No one is allowed to visit him yet. It may disturb him."

I had inhaled sharply. "How bad is it?" I managed to ask.

"Really, Ms. Popplewell, your body must rest properly-"

"I want the truth. How bad is it?"

She paused in restocking the cabinet by the bathroom door. "Not very good."

I bowed my head silently and watched my fingers as they curled and uncurled, twisting the white sheets into crumpled misshapen figures. Something was catching in my throat, preventing me from breathing. I managed to nod.

For once, Pam looked sympathetic. "I'm sorry," she whispered.

Then she turned and left.

I~I~I~I~I

I stood up quickly as I saw a stretcher come wheeling silently round the corner. I glanced at the name on the chart clipped to the side: Zac Heyerdahl.

Dad's hand rested lightly on my left shoulder, the side which was less bruised. "He'll be all right, Winnie," he murmured. "I'm sure of it. Relax."

I nodded vigorously and adjusted the sling on my right arm. Then I took a few tentative steps toward the stretcher, where the male nurse had parked it just outside the waiting room to the OR. Sure enough, it was Zac lying there. But he looked terrible. His complexion was chalky and grey, not like the tanned golden skin I had come to know and love. His eyes were closed; there were dark bruises under them, and several scabbed cuts on his forehead and the left side of his face. The rest of him was hidden under a blanket. I knew there was no use looking.

"Zac?" I whispered. "Hey, Sunshine. Can you hear me?"

He muttered something in his drugged sleep and moved his head infinitesimally.

"I love you, Zac," I said. My eyes were already tearing up. I hesitated before taking his limp, clammy hand and holding it gently to my cheek. "We're going to beat Nemesis. Do you hear? You're going to live."

"I'm afraid he can't hear you, miss," said the male nurse, coming back with a sheaf of papers in hand. "He's been heavily sedated. But no worries. A few hours after the operation, he should regain consciousness."

He and another nurse wheeled away the stretcher. But just as they disappeared through the door, I was quite certain I heard Zac's scratchy voice coming back through the hallway.

"Winnie..."

I~I~I~I~I

"Honestly, girl. Did you really think mortal medicine would simply heal him?"

I moved my head tiredly. "What are you doing here, Nemesis?"

Arms crossed, the anomalously green-eyed Demi Cochemagne moved casually toward me from across the little overhanging glass room from which I had been watching the operation. "Demigods are only half mortal, Wynter. I thought you knew that. No mortal works of science could fix a damage to something magical. Sooner or later something will collide. More likely sooner."

"You didn't answer my question," I spat. "What. Are. You. Doing here?"

"Watching fate." She shrugged and turned away back toward the glass, as if genuinely interested in what was going on down there. "Or rather, watching the Fates." She cast me a careless smile and pointed with a long black-nailed finger.

I followed her gaze. Transparent in the room below, like ghosts, were the three grannies I could only smartly assume were the so-called Fates. Sure enough, they held their signature spinning wheel with the distaff and scissors. The oldest and most wizened of them had claimed the transparent stool and held the shears around the slim golden thread that the other two held, poised to snip.

I couldn't move.

Down below, the doctor and nurses were moving briskly about, so fluid and confident in their procedures. How could I doubt them? But Nemesis was there beside me, and there were the Fates sitting behind the operating table.

I swallowed.

The shears moved a fraction of an inch closer to the thread.

I blinked once, twice.

The shears closed round the fiber.

I closed my eyes.

Even at this distance, I heard it. The neat clip of that golden thread, the soft whisper in the air as the two severed ends fluttered to the ground.

I opened my eyes. The doctor and the nurses were staring about at each other in blank shock. The monitor had flatlined. That single, eternal beep filled my ears like a scream.

"I was just wondering," came Nemesis' voice again from seemingly far off. "I know you. I know you because Demi knows you. Even in the most hopeless of situations, you would charge down a Titan lord with your bare hands and wrestle with death. And, well, here I am." Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her spread her arms wide. "Go ahead. Ignite me in blue fire, Wynter. Bury me in a magic pit. Better yet, use your telekinesis and toss me out this window. It's pure glass."

I let my head droop against the glass panel with a bang. There hung an eternal moment of silence. I could only hear my own heavy breathing and the rising beat of my heart. "You think I'm dumb, don't you?" I whispered.

Nemesis gave a breathless sort of laugh. "I'm quite sure I don't know what you mean."

"Just answer me!" I cried. I gestured about. "What is this? What is _all this_? What the hell does 'life' mean?" The tears were coming down now hot and fast. "What are we doing here? _What am I doing here_?"

Nemesis straightened and folded her arms. "Life, Wynter, is a fraction of time before the final eternity. It is a test."

"Then why in Hades' helm are you controlling me? Why is everyone controlling me?" I shouted. "Why can't I make my own damn choices? Why do I get dragged into a game I had no clue existed, punished for a crime I didn't know I committed, forced to play against someone who treats me like a test tube rat? Why do I not know the stakes until they're lost? Why do I have to go traipsing on a _quest_ to find a damn useless demigod and get out of the way when all along you've been toying with me?"

"But that's where you are wrong, Wynter," replied Nemesis. "You have been making your own choices. You could have chosen to decline Chiron's request, to keep an eye on home and on Demi's activity; but instead you made a choice to find Percy Jackson and Annabeth Chase because you thought they were in danger, and because you care about them as much as you would care about your own family. And deny it or not, you _knew_, from the very beginning of this journey, how high the stakes would be."

"What?" I whispered through my tears. "What journey? What the hell are you talking about?"

"Call it a test, call it a journey. More than half the time they mean nearly the same thing. You never listen, Wynter. _Life is a test_. It would not be a test if you did not make your own choices."

"I didn't have a choice about getting possessed by Kronos," I spat.

"Oh, yes, you did," she said softly. "Wynter, you did. Your brother Jasper meant nothing to you five months ago. Why exchange your soul for a mere half-brother who tried to kill you countless times before?"

It took me a moment to answer. I swallowed the lump in my throat. "Because...because my mother asked me to."

"Because you love her," Nemesis stated. "You made a choice. You could have broken Hecate's heart, or you could have pretty much thrown yourself off the cliff with Kronos inside you-which is what you did."

"But I could never fail my mother!" I cried. "I did what I thought was best!"

"And upset the balance of the universe by wiggling out of that toughie with Gaia's help. Ah, yes, so that brings us back to...here."

I swiped impatiently at the moisture trailing from my nose. "Bring him back, Nemesis. It isn't fair. Bring him back!"

Nemesis laughed. "Not fair, Wynter? Who do you think I am? I am all about fairness! I am the goddess of justice!"

"Bring him back!" I screamed.

"Or what? What will you do?"

I stopped.

"Bear it in mind, Wynter. You are being tested! You must make your choices with utmost care!"

Suddenly her voice had blurred in my ears, and I felt my vision going. The air was becoming too heavy to breathe; I crumpled to the floor, hardly feeling the cold tiles under my hands and knees. It had hit me like a sucker punch in the gut. Zac was gone. Dead. Nemesis had killed him.

And there was no way to get him back.

"What's the point of choosing," I whispered brokenly, "if I've already failed this test?"

I~I~I~I~I

The stadium round the arena had filled silently as I stood in the center beside the coffin beneath the golden flag of Apollo. Chiron, in full centaur form, came trotting out to join me a moment later. He was followed by Aithne, Jasper, Percy, and Annabeth, who were all as sober as the rest of us. Chiron stamped his foot for attention. The movement was hardly necessary.

"We are gathered here today to honor a beloved half-blood," he began, his voice seemingly amplified. "He was a son of Apollo. He helped to lead many quests to help other demigods like him, and to fight the dak forces that have never ceased invading the world of Olympians. His name was Zac Heyerdahl."

I shivered in the late November wind that had penetrated the camp's borders. I shifted to pull my black jacket closer round my shoulders.

"Some of you may have never known him," Chiron continued. "But to many of you, he meant a lot. Over the past summer he has served as leader of the Apollo cabin in the absence of his older siblings. He has trained and fought bravely; he is an example to the kind of people we want to be. I pray that his soul may find peace in Elysium." Chiron stepped back and gestured Aithne, Jasper, Percy, and Annabeth forward.

"Zac Heyerdahl was the love of my sister Winnie. I respect him for what he's done for her, and for being kind to everyone, even me," spoke Jasper.

"Zac was a pretty good friend to me," said Percy. His deep voice carried. "We worked together in training a lot. And we were on quests together, three times now."

"He always cheered us up when it seemed really hopeless," Annabeth added. "That was his gift."

Aithne cleared her throat and ran a hand through her tangle of red curls. Her bright eyes flashed. "I never got to know Zac much on the quests we shared, but like Annabeth said, he was a happy guy. And the last time we traveled together, when...Wynter had an accident and we had to get her back...I saw how much he cared about other people. More than himself. How he liked to heal and to help. Like a real son of Apollo."

The Apollo cabin, seated in the front row of the stadium, all murmured respectfully.

"Thank you," said Chiron. He glanced at me and lowered his voice. "Just a few words, Wynter. If you would."

I nodded mutely and stepped up till I stood an arm's length away from the shrouded coffin. I traced the image of the golden chariot on it with a finger. "Zac and I..." My voice was too soft. I cleared my throat and tried again. "Zac and I...we were...very close."

My throat closed, and I had to swallow a few times before beginning again.

"Five months ago, I was in a predicament that no one has ever known till now. I was possessed by Kronos. It was my end of a bargain to get someone back whom I really valued."

The crowd stirred in confusion.

"I was ready to die and call it the end. But Zac was there-and he gave me hope. He wasn't just an encourager. He lifted me onto his shoulders and carried me through that time. If not for him, I would not be standing here right now. Because of him, I am free."

I glanced at my companions and saw Annabeth swallowing. Doubtless she was remembering that time, too.

"And as Aithne said, recently we were called on a quest. I was attacked and wounded, and I was lost in the wilderness. I don't know what I'd do if Zac, along with my friends, hadn't come to find me and bring me back."

Jasper bowed his head and held a hand over his eyes.

"And not five days ago, Zac saved my life. The car..." I whispered. I straightened. "A car would have hit and killed me. He knocked me aside and took it himself. The doctors..." I had to stop now. The tears were already clogging my voice. I turned to the shroud and touched it once more. "Thank you, Zac."

Chiron took up the blazing torch then and held its vermillion flame to the brillight shimmering shroud. At the same time that it exploded in fire, every single person in the stadium rose to his feet with a rumble. All I heard was the crackle of the flames licking up the intricately woven shroud, and my own heavy moist breathing.

"I love you, Zac," I whispered.

**A/N: Hm...I think "sad" would be an understatement. I guess I never knew until now I could actually write something of this emotional weight. But here it is, and I've written it. It probably doesn't sound much like Winnie, who's the bright, sarcastic, humorous person we love. But please don't stop reading! And as always, reviews are MORE than welcome. =)**

**~Katrina Mae**


	10. Chapter 10:The Perfume Goddess Annoys Me

**A/N: Uh...I don't even know why I always put up a note before each chapter. Anyway, please read!**

Chapter 10: The Perfume Goddess Ticks Me Off

The bacon tasted like spackling paste in my mouth. I rolled it around a couple of times with my tongue as I stared down at the yellow sea of eggs on my plate.

"Are you going to swallow that or not?" asked Jasper.

I sighed and swallowed.

"You'd better hurry," said Dad softly. "You'll both be late for school."

I listlessly pushed my breakfast around a while longer with my fork, then looked up at Dad. "Can I stay today?"

He sighed and seemed to debate with himself. Finally he said, "I'm sorry, Winnie, but you have to go to school. It's what's best."

I swallowed and uttered not another word. After dumping my plate into the sink, I picked up my school tote and trudged outside to where Jasper's motorcycle stood.

I~I~I~I~I

Cramped hallways, smelly lockers, buzzing whispers of gossiping students. All of a sudden I was overwhelmed by a wave of homesickness-a longing to be back at camp. That was _my_ home, after all. I belonged among other demigods, in the free air where I could practice weaponry and magic.

I attempted to duck down low so that my bright carrot head wouldn't be seen from the window of the principal's office, but it was too late. A second later Mr. Laferty's balding head popped out of the screened door. "Ms. Popplewell? A word with you, please."

Sighing under my breath, I shouldered my bag and followed him inside.

"Please, have a seat."

I was dying to say that I would stand for the sake of being contrary, but I was wise enough to realize the next moment that that would not help my case. I sat.

"I am well aware that you have not been present in school for last three weeks, Ms. Popplewell," said Mr. Laferty. "I have received no explanation or excusal slip whatsoever."

I thought quickly. How could I explain a quest? In the flurry of things, I'd forgotten all about darn _school_. "There was an emergency, Mr. Laferty. I had to attend to...a...relative." I supposed Rowan would count as a distant relation. "Coming back, I was caught in a car accident." I gestured to the sling on my right arm.

"Are you not aware that you must submit a suitable explanation for absence prior to taking off from school?"

I lied. "No, Mr. Laferty."

He eyed me dubiously. Finally he heaved a sigh and said, "Then I shall excuse you just this once and notify your current instructors to make an exception in examinations. However, I expect you to use good judgment in the future."

"Yes, Mr. Laferty."

Biting back all the bitter retorts on my tongue, I wheeled and walked out of the office-straight into a sophomore laden with books. We collided with yelps of surprise and a grand crash. Quickly I knelt to help her up and gather her things.

"I'm sorry," I muttered. "I wasn't looking."

The girl flipped her hair out of her face and studied me for a minute. Then she exclaimed, "Oh, you're Wynter Popplewell! You're in my biology class. I haven't seen you in a long while! Where've you been?"

I scrutinized her and couldn't recall her face from any class at all. But then again, my mind wasn't exactly working right. "Um...Long Island," I mumbled. "Relatives."

"Oh, really?" She picked up a geometry textbook and shoved it into her sequined bag. "How was it?"

Would she just bug off? "Uh...tiring."

"Yeah, I can imagine! I just came back from Thanksgiving weekend at my cousins' house. It's so noisy and annoying when all your aunts and uncles are there! Oh, wait, are you the Winnie Popplewell from this week's papers?"

I blinked. "What?"

"You don't know? It's all over the news. About the accident by Starbucks. I guess that's where you broke your arm, I see. That was your boyfriend who died, right? I'm very sorry, it must be terrible. His name was Zac, wasn't it?"

Something roared to life within me. I stood and charged at her, slamming her into the nearest locker with a clatter. "Don't you dare say his name to me ever again," I hissed. My fingers tightened round the collar of her hoodie. "If you do, you cannot imagine the things that will happen to you. I swear you will regret it."

Her pupils dilated and her breathing spiked in anxiety. For once, I felt strong. Powerful. Even...feared.

"Ms. Popplewell! What is the meaning of this?"

We both whipped our heads around as Mr. Laferty came bumbling down the corridor, coffe cup and papers in hand. Slowly I uncurled my fingers from the girl's sweatshirt. She sagged back against the locker, panting.

"Nothing," I said, and picked up my tote and brushed past them toward algebra.

I~I~I~I~I

By the time lunch period rolled around, I could not take it anymore. I slipped out the back door of the cafeteria and located Jasper's motorcycle in a parking lot a few blocks away; he attended the local college there and always came by in the early afternoon to pick me up from school. I tore a sheet from my notebook and wrote: _Will come home later this afternoon. Don't pick me up. Winnie_. This I wrapped around the handlebar and folded the corners in to make it stay. Then, making sure no one was looking, I magically converted my tote into my backpack, slung it over my shoulder, and set off in a totally different direction.

I didn't know exactly where I was headed. New York was hardly the place for meadows and forests, but I had spent fifteen years of my life in this city-eleven of them on my own-and I knew the ins and outs of it like the sole of my foot. I struck off for the train station first and veered off to the right to avoid the jabbering throng of people; from there I jumped the rails-hardly even bothering to check for oncoming traffic, since I could always tell by the vibrations in the ground-and crossed a miniscule park toward the industrial side.

Each block had a distinct smell: lumber, steel, gasoline, burnt plastic, even heated thread. I passed by all the factories, skirted into the tiniest allies, and emerged on a slightly brighter side. Now I entered the greenery warehouse that was closest at hand, and slipped into the vast greenhouse where sunlight poured in unhindered and I could smell the mixed fragrances of different flowers. Finally I plopped down in a locked doorway partially concealed from most prying eyes by voluminous waterfalls of ivy and vines.

There, I put my head between my knees and cried.

_Wynter_, spoke Hecate's voice in my mind.

_Mother!_ I cried. _Why didn't you tell me this was going to happen? You knew all along! Why didn't you tell me?_

_And what would you have done, Wynter?_ Hecate replied. _You must know that I grieve his death along with you because you are my own daughter. But had I foretold to you outright this event, what would you have done?_

I swallowed. I didn't know the answer to that. But seeking something, anything, to blame, I said, _Then why did you ask me to get back Jasper? You knew Gaia would have helped me, and you knew her resurrecting me would upset the balance of the universe. Why did you even ask me to get Jasper back?_

_Because he is your brother and my son_, she said simply. _He is a powerful god. By remaining in the hands of Kronos, he would have served as a measureless weapon for evil._

_You're heartless_.

_Am I really?_ she asked. _Please, Wynter, you must understand. I feel your grief. But the greater good must be served. Where would we all be if Jasper were still serving as the vessel for Kronos?_

I made no reply.

Hecate seemed to sigh. _I must take my leave for now. I will always be watching._ Her voice faded and then echoed into nothingness.

"School, gardens, homework. This is all meaningless," I whispered to the geranium flowering at my side.

"But you've got to keep going," said a man's voice.

My eyes widened. My head jerked up. I gasped.

Zac was standing there before me, shining and golden as ever, his brilliant eyes glowing with love and pride. "Hey," he whispered.

I reached out a hand to touch his cheek. My fingers passed straight through. I wanted to cry. "You're not...you're still...gone?"

Sadly he nodded. Then he took my hand in both of his, and his image seemed to reinforce itself for a moment, so that I actually thought I could feel something brushing against my skin. "I came because I know you need me," he said softly. "But you've got to move on."

I sobbed. "I miss you so much, Zac." A tear slid out and splashed on his half-dreamed hand.

"I know you do," he whispered. "I miss you too. I always think of you."

Slowly I lifted my gaze. "What is it like? In Elysium?"

He shrugged and offered me one of his half-smiles which I loved so much. "It's okay. They serve pretty good burgers. But it's...it's not really paradise, without you."

"I want to be with you," I said.

His eyebrows came together, another habit I'd noticed in him long ago. "Please, Winnie. You have to stay. Your work on earth is not done yet. It kills me not to be with you, to be telling you this...but you have to stay. I'll be waiting for you." Slowly he took my hands and kissed each fingertip, one by one. "I pray it won't be long."

I swallowed and set my jaw. "I will be with you again, Zac. If it's the last thing I do, I will make sure we are together."

"I know." His image was already fading, fast. "I love you, Winnie."

"I love you, Zac."

I~I~I~I~I

I couldn't remember when I had fallen asleep. It was the first time in such a long while that I had slept for real-but it was not dreamless. His glowing eyes followed me everywhere, and I could hear his voice whispering, though I could never know what it was he was saying.

I came to in somebody's arms. It was very dark out, and I was passing under a solitary street light that blinded me for a moment. I blinked and moved my head owlishly.

"Hey," said Jasper's voice. He was carrying me in his strong arms as he made his way down the street of our neighborhood. "You okay?"

I hesitated, then nodded. "I'm sorry. I said I was going to come home this afternoon, but...I guess I fell asleep."

"I know," he said simply. "I figured you would go somewhere secluded, so I checked the parks first. Then Mother told me where to find you."

"She-?" Oh. I'd almost forgotten, Jasper could hear Hecate's voice as well. "Jasper, I-" I paused. "Jasper, I saw Zac."

My brother stopped to set me down on my feet outside the apartment and looked at me, long and searchingly. He said nothing. Did he think I'd been hallucinating?

"He...he came to me," I went on. "And he told me..." I couldn't go on. I didn't have it in me to speak those words, that final goodbye. Zac wanted me to move on, but it just hurt too much, even to think of those words in my head.

Jasper understood. He sighed and nodded, then put an arm around my shoulder to help me through the door. I saw a distant light; it seemed to come from the kitchen. Dad must have stayed up waiting for Jasper to bring me back. I glanced at the time on the stove. It was past ten o'clock.

Dad stood from the table and walked toward us, then stopped, silhouetted in the doorway against the dim chandelier. He simply nodded to us and let us pass. After that I must have lost consciousness again, because when I woke up once more, I was back in bed.

I~I~I~I~I

It was afternoon again. I had submitted myself to another day of hell in school. My classmates all knew by now about the accident and Zac's death. They also knew about my attack on Sloane, the sophomore girl supposedly from biology class, and they stayed as far away as if I had the cooties.

I was managing to do my homework, though my heart just wasn't in it. I was doing the same in my tests and papers. I suspected the teachers were giving me a little break. But how long they would, I don't know. They probably expected me to get over this in two weeks, just like any mortal girl would over her boyfriend when they broke up. But I wasn't a mortal, and neither was Zac, and we hadn't broken up. A daughter of Aphrodite possessed by Nemesis had killed him in revenge, and a visit from my boyfriend's ghost had just made me miss him more than ever, and I didn't know how I could continue my work for Olympus when half of my body had been chopped off.

And how would I ever explain that to Ms. Mavity in algebra class?

"Winnie?" It was Jasper, calling from the kitchen. "Do you want some cookies? Dad left us some from work."

I thought a minute. "Thanks, I'll get it myself," I called back.

I picked up my special purple pen with the blue pom-pom; it was from Zac, a kind of joke when I'd mentioned that I was devising new spells. He had urged me to write them all down on a parchment like an ancient wizard. I didn't have parchment, but I had purple stationery. I tore off a few sheets from the pad and began to write.

_Dear Zac,_

_I keep thinking of that day you visited me in the greenhouse. I always miss you. I want you to know that._

_I'm doing okay in school. Did I tell you about the time I attacked someone from biology? I suppose you already know, though. I'm sorry. I wasn't thinking right, and I just lost control. I promise it won't happen again, because I know you would never want me to become that kind of person._

_I overheard Dad and Zac talking this morning on my way to the kitchen for breakfast. They were discussing getting a pet. I think they want me to have one, to help me. I told them I hate cats; I'm not a traditional witch-get it? Actually, I like dogs. A big one, maybe a golden retriever. That would be nice. His fur should be shiny and brilliant, just like your hair. I always remember your eyes. Did you ever know that your eyes turn different colors along with your moods? They're very dark when you're sad. I've never seen you sad before, except for that last time you visited me. Your eyes were very dark then, so I know you really miss me. Then they turn a liquid gold when you're utterly happy. When you're confused, they have flecks of hazel in them. And when you're embarrassed, your tiny freckles show up because you turn pink._

_I wonder if you can read this. You probably can, because I've heard that spirits can watch over people. Are you watching me right now? I really hope you are. Do you think I should get a dog?_

_I really love you. More than you will ever know._

_~Winnie_

"Hellooo, Wynter!"

I whipped around, pen dripping in hand, to see a most familiar figure leaning casually against my windowpane. Aphrodite, the goddess of perfume, flirting, and the word "annoying." I'm sorry if I'm offending any of her more decent offspring, but I'm afraid my past encounters with her have been less than satisfactory.

"I think I have more than a few reasons to throw you out of my house," I informed her calmly.

She flipped a dark curl from her eyes. "Let me guess. One, my daughter killed your boyfriend. Two, she tried to kill you. Three, she tried to kill you again."

"I think I have a tad more against you as well," I replied. "I'll let you figure them out. But why are you here?"

For once, the goddess of beauty was actually direct to the point. "I want you to go back to Camp Half-Blood over Christmas break."

That was the last thing I'd ever expected her to say. My mouth fell open. "What?"

"I have reason to believe it will do you much good," she continued, unfazed. "There's somebody I want you to meet."

"Meet? Whatever _for_? What the hell are you talking about?"

She cocked her head, and her shiny curls tipped back to make her look even more luscious than ever. "Think about it, Wynter. You're stuck here doing school, thinking of buying a pet dog to ease your pain, totally put out by everybody else because they're pressuring you to, quote, 'get over it'. But you know deep down it's Camp Half-Blood that you're missing, and it's the only place where you can heal. Besides, you have friends there."

"Aithne and Percy and Annabeth are in school," I said dubiously.

"Don't worry, they will be there for Christmas. I might mention also that there will be a special dance there; it's done once every five years. That's why your friends will be visiting."

"A dance," I snarled, "is the _last_ thing I need."

"You're always so sure of what you need and don't need, aren't you, Wynter? For once, let somebody help you."

I wanted to lunge at her and pin her to the window, the way I'd done in Sloane. But then I remembered the promise I had just written. I sat still. "Did my mother put you up to this?"

Aphrodite shrugged and set her arms akimbo. "She might have mentioned it."

"Get out."

"Of course, my dear. But do think about it. It will be good for you."

She snapped her fingers and disappeared in a puff of turquoise smoke.

I sat there for a long minute, alternately sighing and twiddling my pen with my fingers.

Yes, I missed camp almost half as much as I missed him.

Finally I stood up and strode over to my closet to rifle through it impatiently. Did I have something decent to wear to a _dance_? All I possessed were jeans, denim mini skirts, rainbow tie-dyed tees, the purple sun dress from Zac...

"Jasper!" I hollered. "Could you drive me somewhere after dinner tonight?"

**A/N: Guilty as charged...I was listening to Leona Lewis's "Love Letter" and "Crying Is Beautiful." So I guess you can see where I got this chapter. XD Anyway, as you can see, I'm updating this particular fanfic **_**very**_** often now, so stay tuned! And review, as always!**

**~Katrina Mae**


	11. Chapter 11: Get on the Dance Floor

**A/N: Guilty, guilty. I was supposed to update a bit earlier, but then I got distracted by shopping and...um...rings. Yeah. I'm a little crazy about buying rings. None of you actually know that, I realized just now, not even my friends. *headdesk* My mom always wonders how I'm able to play the piano with all that stuff on my hands. (I told my boyfriend I like rings because they feel like extra knuckles for punching idiot bullies...XD) Anyway, I'm rambling here. Please read!**

Chapter 11: Get on the Dance Floor

Jasper has to be the most patient brother a fifteen-year-old freshman could ever have. I mean, I suppose it kind of makes up for all the times he tried to kill me before under the possession of Kronos.

He parked his motorcycle neatly with a swerve in the nearest bike slot and dismounted, locking his helmet to the handlebars, and held out a hand for me. For the first time in weeks, I felt a smirk battling at my face. "Show-off," I muttered.

He grinned back quite easily and helped me down. As we made our way through the slowing traffic toward the nearest dress shop downtown, he said, "So what's all this about?"

"What's what all about?"

"Well, going out. You know, going _out_."

I shrugged and entered the shop, towing him along, enjoying the smell of sensible fragrance and the tinkle of the door bells. "I need some fresh air."

"I'd say."

I shot him a look, which he studiously ignored. I bit my lip and turned away.

"You're not telling, are you?"

As I turned back to my brother to tell him to can it, our eyes met, and suddenly I could feel the understanding and sympathy in there which I'd never even bothered before to be aware of. Before I could stop, I found myself telling him. "Aphrodite visited me a few hours ago. And she wants me to go back to camp."

Jasper squinted at me.

Realizing the misunderstanding, I amended, "For Christmas break. You know, get to see some other weirdos like me. Get...get over things."

"The Christmas dance," Jasper murmured in realization. "Aphrodite told you this?"

"Yeah."

"And are you saying you are going _listen_ to _Aphrodite_?"

In response, I flushed a beet red. "W-well," I stammered, "I g-guess it would be better than getting a pet dog. Much cheaper, you know, low maintenance, no Alpo or collars, because it's a one-time thing, and how expensive can a dress be, anyway? It's not like a party on Olympus on something. I don't know how much a party on Olympus would cost. And I think I need to see Aithne and Percy and Annabeth and-"

Jasper looked at me. "You're blathering."

I promptly shut up.

"Well, since you have a better reason to go, I'll help you," he said at last.

"Better reason?"

"Seeing Aithne and the others is a good idea. Not bad at all. You could use some cheering up lately." His voice dropped into that unfamiliar sympathy I'd seen his eyes only a moment ago. In that second, it suddenly hit me: what sorrows did Jasper hide at night, when he lay in bed shuddering from nightmares? Was I not the only one...who feared myself?

Quickly my brother broke off our eye contact and pointedly cleared his throat. He faced the rack like a soldier in training in the barracks; dutifully I followed suit.

"You like purple, don't you?"

I almost nodded. Then I shook my head. It reminded me too much of Zac. And remembering Zac at the winter dance was the last thing I needed. I was certain Aithne and my other friends were there to comfort me, but I didn't want to be a total icebag, either. It was a _dance_, after all. People at dances were supposed to act happy.

Jasper nodded back in complete understanding. It was so foreign to me, shopping with an older brother and being able to almost communicate with him silently. He really knew me. It put me to shame-the teary kind-that I hardly knew him.

"How abouut yellow?" he suggested.

I gave him a look.

"Well, you're all for the cheerful, sunny look, aren't you?" he said defensively.

I sighed. "Cheerful, not cornstalk in the middle of December, Jasper. It's not a winter color."

"I bet Demi would-" He stopped. Oops. He and Demi had been together a long time ago, when both of them had been on the, er, bad side. Now that Jasper was good and completely disgusted with Demi, she had found another perfect excuse to kill Zac in revenge against me. Kind of boyfriend for boyfriend, I bet she was thinking. But oops again. Not a safe topic.

"Aphrodite was wearing this ridiculous turquoise thing," I said quickly to lighten the conversation. "D'you suppose I'd look all right in it?"

Jasper turned to appraise me critically. Finally he shook his head. "Your hair."

I gasped indignantly. "There is absolutely nothing wrong with my hair!"

"Yes, there is, unless you want to look like Ariel the Little Mermaid."

I made a sound of disgust and turned back to the rack. Randomly I picked out a fancy something that was a size 0. "How about this?"

Jasper wrinkled his nose. "Brown? Seriously, what happened to your taste? Did Aphrodite take it somewhere when she evaporated in your room?"

I almost laughed. Instead I shrugged, fingering the taffeta. "I just thought the ruffles would be nice."

"Trust me, Winnie, ruffles would _not_ be nice on you."

I shot him a dirty look.

He was holding his hands up, but he went on, "What you need is something that doesn't bury you. You're so small, it will probably be forever finding something that would actually fit you."

"Thanks for that, Mr. Over-Flatterer."

"Har-har."

And, believe it or not, I actually felt a teensy bit better. _I'm trying, Zac_, I thought wistfully. _It's not easy, but I'm doing it for you_.

"Hey!" Jasper waved a hand in my face. "You spazzed out for a few seconds back there."

"Sorry." I shook my head. "Just...talking."

"Talking? With Mother?"

"Um, no." I flushed again. "Just, like, to myself."

Jasper let it go at that. "Well, I was trying to get your attention. Will this do?"

The moment he held out the piece of silk to me, I thought I must be shopping with an angel. "Who are you and what have you done with my brother?" I whispered in awe. I felt him grin behind me.

I~I~I~I~I

"Why do you need to go back to camp?" Dad asked mildly.

I licked my lips, to no avail. "Because...Aphrodite told me to."

Dad's reaction was even worse that Jasper's: nothing. He blinked. "I see. So she urged you to attend this dance?"

"Um, yeah, pretty much."

"And are you meeting with anyone?"

Oh. I flushed for the third time that night. Now I could see where this was going. Dad obviously thought Aphrodite wanted to hook me up with somebody to get my mind off Zac's death. Well, I guess he deserved some brownie points for connecting the dots-she was the goddess of love, for crying out loud. I wanted to do a mental headdesk.

"No," I said quickly. "Percy and Annabeth and Aithne should be there, and my other friends, but...no. No date. I'm just going stag."

"Hm." Dad pursed his lips. "Okay."

I gaped at him. "What?"

"I said all right, I'll drive you there. When do you want to leave?"

I could hardly believe my own father was letting me off the hook so easily. But then again, maybe he'd already gotten to know me in the past very few months we'd shared together, and he could see that my grief was still too deep for me to start caring for another XY-chromosome feature any time soon. I managed to stammer out, "Uh, this Saturday, after school lets out?"

"Sounds all right to me. I have no weekend classes this year."

My dad was a professor of architecture, and this was indeed his first year of teaching that he wasn't pressured to teach weekend courses, since he had just moved to New York to join me and Jasper and was the newest faculty member at the college.

"I guess I should start packing..."

Dad sounded strangely weary. "Yes, you do that. Good night, Winnie."

"Good night, Dad," I said awkwardly, and gave him a brief hug.

I~I~I~I~I

"What is it with the strawberry patch sign?" Dad asked as we pulled up at the bottom of Half-Blood Hill.

I shrugged. "For mortals. To aid the Mist."

My father shook his head wryly, then cut the engine and got out to help me with my diminutive duffle. I clambered out after him. "Take care of yourself, hon," he said softly, hugging me before seeing me off up the hill. I turned back once to wave, and then faced forward again.

"Winnie the Pooh!"

The squeal came from my vague right. The punch came to my gut. At least, it felt like a punch. And it definitely qualified as my gut.

Aithne's bright green eyes were sparkling like magic fireworks when at last my dizziness had cleared and I could see her more clearly. She was straddling me on my back, having efficiently tackled me from the right in a bear hug. "Welcome home," she said.

"Minus the bruises," I grumbled back, struggling upright. She promptly let go and helped me to my feet. "Hey, you saw me pretty quickly. How'd you know I'd be coming up this hill at that precise second?"

"Uh..." Her eyes went shifty. "A certain goddess might have mentioned it..."

"By Aphrodite's arse," I muttered.

"Oh, no, it wasn't Aphrodite. It was my mom. Hestia."

I was visibly relieved. "Okay. Well, good. Perfect. Excellent." I was babbling again, so I shut up.

Aithne rolled her eyes-her signature expression-and grabbed my hand, towing me down the other side of the hill at gallop speed. My duffle pitifully dragged and bumped on the ground behind. "The dance is tomorrow night, so we'd better get you settled!" she yelled back.

I sighed. Whiplash-hyper as she was, even beating my own standards, it was good to be back with Aithne.

I~I~I~I~I

He came to me again in my dreams.

It was the first time in nearly a week that Zac had visited me in my sleep. For a long time the images of his haunting eyes had abandoned me, and I had been nearly torn between joy and grief-joy that I was fulfilling his wish and eventually forgetting him, grief that I was utterly losing him. Even in my subconscious, somehow I always wanted to have a perfect portrait of Zac Heyerdahl: his wide grin, his loving gold eyes, throwing back his head and laughing, just as he was before he was gone.

"Hey, Winnie," he said in my dream.

In my mind, we were both standing in that clearing where we had crash-landed on our quest barely a month ago-that clearing that was now magically hidden from time and sight because my magic had touched it. Now the clearing had flowered into a heartbreakingly beautiful meadow abounding with hyacinths, foxgloves, and daffodils, even violet forget-me-nots.

I moved toward him. Longingly we both reached out our hands; there was a tingle as our fingertips touched, but it was fleeting, and already his image was beginning to shimmer and fade. He was nothing more than a spirit in this dimension.

I began to cry.

"Don't cry," he whispered, cupping my cheek. "I came because I wanted to tell you that I'm so proud of you. You've been trying, and trying hard, and I am glad that you did."

"I did it for you," I whispered back. All I could do was cry even harder just like the carrot-headed moron I was.

"I know. And I'm glad too that you listened to Aphrodite's suggestion."

I looked up at him in bewilderment.

His mouth was tugging upward in that wry half-smile I loved. "I know she hasn't been exactly accomodating to either of us, and her daughter is...well. I think her suggestion was sensible, all the same."

I shook my head. "I can't believe I'm hearing this from you, Zac Heyerdahl."

"You are." Wordlessly then he leaned down to embrace me, and I met his hug halfway. But it was too brief before his image began to melt again for real. I could no longer hold him solidly.

"I love you like always, Winnie," he called out, as if from the end of a very long tunnel.

I let one tear slide. "I love you madly, Zac."

Then he was gone. I jerked awake, breathing hard. On my pillow was a single violet forget-me-not.

I~I~I~I~I

"Wow, this dress would come down to only my knees on me," remarked Aithne.

I rolled my eyes at her in the floor-length mirror and muttered half-heartedly, "Shut up."

"Is there a mother you haven't mentioned to me yet who picked this out for you? Because it's gorgeous."

"Uh..." I felt my signature moron blush creeping up my face. "Jasper helped me pick it from a discount rack."

Aithne whistled. "He should be a dress designer."

"Aithne..."

"No, really. He has that eye, you know? Hey, is he gay? You know, I would totally not be surprised if he were. Because-"

"Aithne!" I yelped. "Shut up!"

She changed tack at top speed. "Anyway, as I was about to say, you should be glad your boobs are so much bigger than mine, though, because these straps are pretty long, and this neckline would be embarrassing on me-"

"We are so not having this conversation."

"We're girls," she teased. "We're just having girl talk."

"Then talk to yourself. You're girl enough."

Aithne rolled _her_ eyes at me. "Seriously, Wynter! Sometimes I wonder if you know me."

"Yeah, I do. You're the kickass fire-girl smarty-pants who never runs out of sarcastic lines."

"Hm, me in a nutshell," mused Aithne. "Though about the sarcastic lines part, I'm not sure. So far you've beaten me. And that's only half of me in a nutshell, by the way. I do wear dresses."

I turned around to face her fully with a mock expression of horror. "Hypers! When?"

She shoved my head forward again so she could continue brushing my hair. "I swear, Winnie, your hair is twice as bad as Thalia's."

"She's the daughter of the lightning god. Her hair would be all crackly."

"Oh, yeah? Well, multiply that by ten and fit it on your head, chica. You've given me an impossible task."

"It's not like I can't prepare myself for something like this," I protested half-heartedly. But whether I admitted it or not, Aithne was superb. She had pulled and tucked my flowing ice blue silk gown in just the right places to accentuate what I had. It was basically strapless, except that there were four optional straps that crisscrossed across the front and back via snaps, and being more on the modest side, I opted for the straps. I had no shoes. This was when Aithne presented her surprise.

"It's my Christmas gift to you," she said excitedly.

Gingerly I opened the box; it smelled dangerously of department store fragrance. I gasped. Inside were the perfect Cinderella-ish white-silver shoes, studded with rhinestones on crossed straps that actually matched my dress.

"I didn't know what dress you would be wearing, until my mom Hestia nudged me in this direction," she explained, indicating the Caparros shoebox. "And just as well."

My eyes abruptly began to water. "Thank you so much, Aithne."

"Hey, it's just shoes!" she protested, looking suddenly embarrassed. "I didn't think you had anything decent in your wardrobe for-"

"And how do you know what's in my wardrobe?"

We collapsed into giggles then. It hurt my ribs to laugh so hard after complete disuse for the past three weeks, but strangely the pain felt good anyway, like a small callus that pinched but would soon fade and lock all the pin-like pain away inside.

After we had calmed down a bit, I presented her with my own gift: a deadly dagger of celestial bronze, with a hilt molded in the shape of flames and with a wicked blade emblazoned with her name in Greek characters. She gasped and then strangled me to death in merely one of thousands of bear hugs I would undoubtedly have to endure that evening.

"I hope I'm not interrupting an execution?" came a soft, cool voice from the doorway.

We broke apart and turned simultaneously to see a pale, black-haired figure leaning against the lintel of the Hestia cabin.

"Imani!" I cried, and made to hug her, though Aithne held me back, for fear of losing the pins from my half-molded hairdo. "Long time, no see."

The daughter of Nyx glided over silently to look me over. "I know. I heard all about your quest last month. Congratulations, and condolences."

I appreciated heavily then her tone of simplicity. In three short words, she had made me understand that she knew all about my complicated journey and the way it had ended with Zac's death. I loved Imani Knight almost as much as my family, and because I had least expected her to come to camp over December, she was possibly the best Christmas gift I could ever have.

"Thank you," I replied simply, and tried a wobbly smile.

"I brought you something," she said, running one hand through her raven locks and handing me a small velvet box with the other. Cautiously I opened it: inside lay a finely crafted chain of such intricate silver links that I nearly feared it would snap. But even more impressive was the pendant, a ball of deep sapphire that was polished so that its inner imperfections showed like a burst of blue light. The bottom portion of the pendant was encapsuled in silver flames.

For the umpteenth time I was brought near tears. I hugged Imani tightly, completely ignoring Aithne's protests about my pins, and whispered in her ear, "It's perfect. Thank you."

I~I~I~I~I

When I rounded the hump of the hill and first caught sight of the Big House, my breath actually caught in my throat.

"Who did the decoration?" I rasped out.

Aithne grinned from my side. "Me and the Apollo cabin. They love lights, I love fire, you dig it, chica?"

"Yeah." I turn away quickly to study the bursting rays of Christmas lights strung along ever possible plane in the house. I could just imagine Zac grinning as he dropped a bumb on my hair, lighting it a glorious carrot hue. I had to shake my head then. No sad thoughts tonight. _I'm trying, Zac_, I whispered in my mind.

If I thought the dance would be merely impressive, I had clearly underestimated Aithne's and the others' aesthetic skills. The entire Big House rang with lights and bells, complete with mistletoe suspended with care over every single doorway. I shivered and secretly hoped never to be caught under a lintel with another male camper tonight.

"Hey," I said suddenly.

"Huh?" Aithne was expertly roving her eye over the tops of the heads in the crowd of the already-clogged bilboard room, which had been cleared away as a dance space. Something perky was blaring over us.

"Who's your date?" I asked loudly over the din.

"Oh," she shrugged. "Rowan."

My mouth fell open before I was even aware that it had. "Rowan? The...the god who shoots moonbeams from his eyes?"

Aithne grinned. "That shocked at his taste? Don't worry, Winnie the Pooh, we're just going as friends. Neither of us had any dates, so we just unanimously agreed to show up and meet as if we were each other's dates."

My fuzzy brain finally managed to process her jumbled explanation. "You mean no one asked him?"

Aithne gave me a weird look. "Winnie, _he_ was the one who didn't ask anybody. The guys asks, remember?"

I shrugged. It wasn't like it even mattered. "Well, enjoy yourself," I told her, and injected the most genuine smile I could muster.

Aithne believed me. "You're actually sweet, did I ever tell you that, Winnie?" she commented. "Try to smile a bit more. There. Your eyes looked too sad back there."

...Not that I could help that.

Shooting me one last encouraging glance, Aithne melted into the crowd. I caught one glimpse of her tapping an impossibly tall blond guy on the shoulder; his back was to me, but in that instant I knew it was Rowan.

Imani brushed past with a plastic goblet of punch, then braked abruptly and backpedaled when she realized it was me shivering under the shadowed canopy of holly by the door. She looked like a real goddess of night, in a gown of the deepest violet hue which accentuated her amethyst irises to perfection. It was modest, but with a teasing V neck and wide sleeves crafted purely of dark purple lace. Peeking from the floor-length hem were silver pumps with faux grape-colored jewels. Her perfect raven hair was pinned loosely at the crown of her head and cascaded in luscious black ringlets down her back. She even wore Goth-ish black makeup complete with cat eyes and lavender lips.

"You look like a goddess," I croaked out.

Imani smiled gently. "You look like an ice queen. The color's perfect for your eyes."

I glanced down at myself and supposed it was true. Come to think of it, even Aithne's forest green frock matched her eyes.

"Well, I have to go meet my date," Imani said, and floated off. "Great seeing you all right."

I nodded and watched her disappear. A minute later some generic Hermes kid asked for a dance. It was a bit lively, but at least the movement and the necessity to watch my feet actually kept my mind completely off other things. After him came his half-brother, who looked almost exactly like him, but with a slightly more mellow personality. It occurred to me absently that I was glad I had no pockets or purses for him filch anything from.

Toward nine o'clock, I was beginning to curse Aphrodite from my admirably wide mental vocabulary for having encouraged me to go stag at this stupid dance. Sure, the punch made me slightly dizzy and I couldn't think of anyone or anything very straight anymore, but it didn't necessarily mean that I was cheered up any.

"You look lonely," said a voice above me.

I was so shocked that I dropped my punch. The glass struck the hardwood floor with an ear-splitting shatter. The shards tinkled away in the wind in the heavy silence that ensued.

Fortunately, only a few other campers had been sober enough to turn and actually locate the disturber of the peace. Seconds later, they all shrugged it off and danced off again.

It was Rowan standing next to me with a now half-mournful expression that was nearly comical. "Oh no, there's a splatter on your hem. No, relax, I'll get it." With his own handkerchief he knelt and dabbed at the beads on my thankfully resistant ice blue silk. They slid off easily.

"I thought you're with Aithne," I said stupidly.

Rowan straightened and smiled slightly. "Just as friends, I assume she told you. We're free to circulate."

I nodded.

He pocketed the crimson-stained kerchief and held out an arm. "Shall we dance?"

**A/N: So I decided to reuse Saphiye-the-Night's brilliant and mysterious character Imani Knight, daughter of Nyx. It's a brief reappearance, but I hope I made you happy, Saphiye! Anyway, there's another chapter in this update. Keep reading!**

**~TOIMI**


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